Scores of US troops injured by Taliban bombing

Saturday’s blast blew the facades from shops outside the Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in Wardak province and broke windows in government offices nearby, said Roshana Wardak, a former parliamentarian who runs a clinic in the nearby town of the same name. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Eight wounded civilians were brought to Wardak’s clinic, two of them with wounds serious enough that they were sent to Kabul. She said one three-year-old girl died of her wounds on the way to the clinic.

The attack was carried out by a Taliban suicide bomber who detonated a large bomb inside a truck carrying firewood, Nato said.

“Most of the force of the explosion was absorbed by the protective barrier at the outpost entrance,” Nato said, adding that the damage was repairable and that operations were continuing.

Fewer than 25 Afghan civilians were also wounded, Nato said, adding that none of the 77 injuries sustained by the Americans were life-threatening. Spokesman Major Russell Fox said all the international troops at the combat outpost are American.

The truck bombing came hours after the Taliban vowed to keep fighting US forces in Afghanistan until all American troops leave the country and stressed that their movement had no role in the September 11 attacks.

On Sunday, the US Embassy in Kabul held a memorial service to mark the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. A military band played as American troops raised an American flag in front of about 300 US and Afghan officials.

Marine Corps General John Allen, the commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan urged those assembled to honour the memory of those who died.

“On that day we lost mothers and fathers, sons and daughters we lost people of many nations and many religions, today we remember, we honour them all,” he said.

The Afghan Foreign Minister said the attacks bound Afghans and Americans together in a “shared struggle.”

In a statement emailed to media, the Taliban accused the United States of using the September 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and said the international community was responsible for killing thousands of Afghans since then.

“Each year, 9/11 reminds the Afghans of an event in which they had no role whatsoever,” the Taliban said. “American colonialism has shed the blood of tens of thousands of miserable and innocent Afghans.”

The US and its allies invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, after the Taliban, who then ruled the country, refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

The late al-Qaida leader was at the time living in Afghanistan, where he ran training camps.

Although the Taliban were swiftly driven from power, the Iraq war gave them breathing space to regroup, rearm and reorganise.

“The Afghans have an endless stamina for a long war,” the statement said.

“Through a countrywide uprising, the Afghans will send the Americans to the dustbin of history like they sent other empires of the past.”

Iraq Cleric calls for attacks to end

An anti-American cleric in Iraq is calling on his followers to cease attacks on US troops leaving the country so that the withdrawal isn’t slowed down.

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has been demanding that all American forces leave Iraq by the end of the year or face widespread violence.

Al-Sadr said on his website late on Saturday that he has ordered his militias to let the Americans leave peacefully. He said his ceasefire order was spurred by last week’s notice by US officials that the withdrawal has begun.