Six Afghan children killed in rocket strike

ASADABAD, Afghanistan, Apr 11 (Reuters) A rocket hit an Afghan school yard today killing six children and wounding up to 15 as they were studying in the open, police said.

Violence has intensified in Afghanistan in recent weeks with a wave of suicide bomb blasts, raids and ambushes against Afghan security forces and foreign troops.

The children were killed at their school outside Asadabad, capital of the eastern province of Kunar near the Pakistani border, which is one of Afghanistan's most violent provinces.

''Two rockets were fired by the enemies of Afghanistan. One hit the compound of a primary school where children including girls were busy studying in the yard,'' said the deputy provincial police chief, Mohammad Hassan Farahi.

Six children were killed and up to 15 wounded, Farahi said.

Government officials refer to Taliban and their Islamist militant allies as ''enemies of Afghanistan''.

Taliban militants have attacked and burned down schools as part of their campaign against the government but it was not clear if the school hit on Monday was the target.

A second rocket hit a police base some distance away. The provincial governor said no one was hurt in that blast.

Distraught parents hunting for their children arrived at the school where text books and pieces of flesh littered the ground, a Reuters reporter said.

Wounded children were taken to a US military base in Asadabad town for treatment, he said.

Shortly after the attack, a bomb went off in a ditch beside a road in the centre of the eastern city of Jalalabad, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Asadabad, wounding five passers-by, said a doctor at a hospital were the wounded were taken.

The blast went off near offices of several foreign aid groups but police said the target was not clear.

Taliban insurgents, fighting since their overthrow in late 2001 to force foreign troops out of the country and topple the Western-backed government, have claimed responsibility for many of the attacks across Afghanistan in recent weeks.

The violence followed a Taliban announcement they had launched a spring offensive and comes as NATO members are preparing to send in thousands more peacekeepers.

The US military says the insurgents are unable to mount large-scale guerrilla attacks, after suffering heavy losses this time last year, and are resorting to bombs to break the will of the people and Afghanistan's foreign backers.

Britain, Canada and the Netherlands are leading a NATO expansion into the dangerous south as the United States hopes to cut its Afghan force by several thousand to about 16,500.

Taliban and members of an allied Islamist guerrilla group are known to operate in Kunar in some strength.

Five US troops were wounded in a roadside bomb blast in the province on April 1.

Four US soldiers were killed in a similar attack there last month and 16 US troops were killed last June when insurgents shot down their helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.

REUTERS SR RK1408