KABUL, Afghanistan — A series of bomb blasts and insurgents attacks killed 11 people across Afghanistan yesterday, including five NATO service members and three Afghan police, officials said.
The strikes, which come a day after Taliban fighters stormed a NATO base in eastern Afghanistan, show the insurgents’ fighting spirit has not been broken despite a surge of US troops and firepower.
Also yesterday, the Afghan president’s office said the former ambassador-designate to Pakistan, who was seized by gunmen two years ago in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, has been released and is back home safe.
The diplomat, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was heading from the Afghan Consulate toward his home on Sept. 22, 2008, when gunmen stopped his vehicle and killed his driver.
“Abdul Khaliq Farahi is in good condition and right now he is in Kabul with his family,’’ President Hamid Karzai’s office said.
NATO said three coalition service members were killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan.
In the south, a roadside bomb killed a Danish soldier and wounded an interpreter, Denmark’s military said. The are some 700 Danish troops in Afghanistan. Another NATO service member was killed yesterday in a separate incident elsewhere in the south, the coalition said.
The deaths brought to 31 the number of coalition service members who have died in Afghanistan this month.
Insurgents also killed three Afghan policemen, who died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the Tarin Kot district of Uruzgan Province in the south, said Governor Khudi Rahim.
A bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded in a marketplace in Kandahar Province, killing two and wounding 10, said the district government chief.
A bomb placed in a wheelbarrow exploded in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangahar Province, killing one person and wounding nine others, including six children and two women, the Interior Ministry said.
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