More than 1,000 mourners had gathered Monday in the eastern Khost province, the ancestral home of Taniwal, when the attacker slipped undetected though a hundreds-strong security force to blow himself up in front of a vehicle carrying a senior police officer who may have been targeted because he was active in operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The bombing caused carnage and chaos, and police fired into the air to control a charge of panicking mourners who feared there might be a second blast. Hospital officials said five police officers and a 12-year-old boy were killed. At least 35 people were wounded.
NATO announced Monday that an ongoing 10-day anti-Taliban offensive in the south has killed more than 500 -- the most intense military confrontation in nearly five years. Despite the upsurge in violence, Canadian PM Stephen Harper is optimistic. He has 2,300 troops in Afghanistan that are at the forefront of an increasingly hot war with the Taliban. The U.S. has about 20,000 troops in the country; Britain, about 5,500; and Germany, about 2,800. Most of Canada's troops are positioned in the southern Kandahar region, a Taliban stronghold, and its troops have been in near-daily combat.
"The Taliban is on the run," Harper proclaimed in a nationally televised address from Parliament Hill in Ottawa, where he was surrounded by the families of some of Canada's victims of the 9/11 attacks and by the wives of soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
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