KABUL, Afghanistan — A man driving a Toyota minivan laden with explosives steered into an American convoy on Tuesday morning, killing 18 people, including 5 American troops, and 12 civilians caught in rush hour traffic in the Afghan capital. Forty-seven civilians were wounded, and a sixth soldier from another NATO country was also killed, officials said.
The blast scattered body parts for 200 feet as the wounded, many of them women and children, some without limbs, lay in the road moaning for help.
In a passenger bus, an Afghan woman lay dead in her seat, cut in half, with her baby still squirming in her arms.
“I just dove on the ground to try to save myself,” said Mafouz Mahmoodi, an Afghan police officer. “And then I got up, and I saw the terrible scene.”
The Taliban took responsibility for the attack in a posting on its Web site, saying the group had dispatched a young man named Nizamuddin, a resident of Kabul. The Taliban said that Nizamuddin carried more than 1,600 pounds of explosives in his van.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
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