Suicide car bomb kills 2 U.S. soldiers in Kabul

Also Friday, a would-be suicide attacker killed only himself when his bomb-packed car exploded prematurely in Kandahar, said police official Rehmat Ali.

The car was parked on the main road to the Kandahar Airfield, where NATO vehicles, Afghan security forces and government officials regularly pass. None were in the area at the time of the blast.

Afghan security forces, meanwhile, found four bombs near a northern Kabul high school, defusing two and safely detonating the others, said police official Mohammed Arif.

About 70 Taliban fighters fired rockets at a district government headquarters in the central province of Wardak early Friday before police repelled them, said provincial police chief Mahboobullah Amiri.

Eight Taliban were killed and four wounded according to witnesses, Amiri said, but police had retrieved no bodies. One policeman was lightly wounded, and eight militants were arrested.

NATO forces launched airstrikes and artillery and mortar barrages on Taliban positions in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district overnight, inflicting an unspecified number of Taliban casualties, said Maj. Scott Lundy, a NATO spokesman. No NATO or Afghan forces were hurt.

Lundy said NATO would press on with Operation Medusa, which began Saturday in Panjwayi, until it had “removed” all the Taliban militants. NATO says it has killed more than 270 insurgents since the offensive began and that hundreds more are massed in the district, west of Kandahar.

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