Taliban suicide bomber kills 17 Afghan civilians

KABUL, July 10 (Reuters) A suicide bomber killed 17 Afghan civilians, including 12 school children, today, the Interior Ministry said, in an attack aimed at Dutch NATO troops patrolling a crowded bazaar in the south of the country.

Some 30 people, including seven Dutch soldiers, were wounded in the attack in the small town of Deh Rawud in Uruzgan province, officials said. The Interior Ministry said some of the wounded were in a critical condition.

The Dutch Defence Ministry said one of its soldiers was also critical. All the wounded have been evacuated to a military hospital in the provincial capital Tarin Kot.

A spokeswoman for the NATO-led force in Kabul said more than a dozen Afghan civilians were killed and more than 30, including eight NATO soldiers, wounded.

Taliban guerrillas, fighting foreign troops and the Afghan government, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, their deadliest attack since a Taliban bomber killed more than 20 police on a bus in the capital Kabul on June 17.

The United Nations condemned the killing.

''In no culture, no country, and no religion is there any excuse or justification for mass murder,'' Tom Koenigs, UN special representative for Afghanistan said in a statement.

''I am especially concerned by the reports I am seeing of a large number of children being among the dead from today's bomb. Such utter disregard for innocent lives is staggering,'' he said.

Taliban insurgents have stepped up their campaign in recent months, relying largely on suicide and roadside bombs against the nearly 50,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan after suffering heavy casualties in conventional attacks last year.

The Taliban accuse US and NATO forces of targeting ordinary Afghans in airstrikes that have killed more than 300 Afghan civilians this year. Some 6,000 people have been killed, including 1,500 civilians, in Afghanistan in the last 18 months.

Western forces say Taliban fighters use civilians as human shields and deliberately attack troops from populated areas.

Speaking from an unknown location, a Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the attacker was a villager from the south of the country where the Taliban are strongest.

He repeated the militant Islamist group's warning to civilians to stay away from Afghan and foreign forces.

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