Associated Press
KABUL -- A suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 23 others Friday in a busy city square in western Afghanistan, while near Kabul a powerful former warlord narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, officials said.
The attacks came a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai took the oath of office for a second term amid escalating violence across the country. Karzai said he has put national reconciliation with Taliban insurgents at the top of his agenda.
Lawmaker Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a former Northern Alliance leader who has been accused by Human Rights Watch of war crimes, was in a convoy with his bodyguards when a remote-controlled bomb hidden in an irrigation canal beside the road exploded in the Paghman district north of the Afghan capital, said district chief of police Abdul Razaq.
One car in the convoy was destroyed, and Razaq said five of Sayyaf's bodyguards had been killed. Sayyaf himself was not injured.
In the suicide bombing earlier Friday in western Afghanistan, a bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up about 55 yards from the Farah provincial governor's compound in a crowded square, said Gov. Rohul Amin. The dead included two children and a police officer, he said.
Afghan police shouted "Stop! Stop!" at the motorcyclist before he detonated the explosives, provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Faqir Askar said. It was unclear what the bomber was targeting.
Dr. Shir Agh Asas at the hospital in Farah city said several children also were among the wounded.
An operation three days ago in another part of the province killed five insurgents, including a Taliban commander and a bomb-maker, Askar said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of Friday's attacks.
