Taliban insurgents led by suicide bombers launched attacks on an Italian military base and near a government building in the main city in Afghanistan's west today, killing four people and wounding dozens, officials said.
The simultaneous attacks were launched in the centre of Herat, near a Transport Department building and bus stop, and outside the Italian base on the city's outskirts, Herat provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib said.
Dawood Saba, the governor of Herat province, said a suicide bomber in a small truck blew himself up at the entrance of the Italian-run base and that between two and four other attackers were still fighting from within a building nearby.
Another senior police official said 37 people were wounded in the attacks. All those killed and wounded were civilians, he said.
However, Reuters pictures taken at the base showed one serviceman in an Italian uniform bleeding from a head wound next to the rubble of a partially destroyed wall.
The attacks were especially worrying because normally peaceful Herat, near the border with Iran, is one of seven areas where a gradual handover of security responsibility from foreign forces to Afghans will begin in July.
That handover is part of a process that will lead to all foreign combat troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Some US lawmakers and analysts have questioned the wisdom of that timetable with violence still at such high levels.
A police official said it appeared most of the dead and wounded were from the attack in the centre of the city.
Pictures taken outside the Italian-run base, which houses a joint civilian and military Provincial Reconstruction Team, suggested the truck bomb had destroyed part of an outer wall, a gate and a guardhouse.
External damage was severe, with rows of burnt-out bicycles and cars, and the windows of shops shattered for some distance.
A Taliban spokesman said four suicide bombers launched the attacks, although the militant Islamists often exaggerate claims involving attacks against foreign and Afghan targets.
Italian troops form the bulk of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the area, but there was no immediate confirmation of casualties from ISAF. Italy has about 3,880 troops serving in Afghanistan, the majority of them in the west.
Reuters