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EXCLUSIVE: Captain Katherine Jenerette Gives A Woman’s View From AfghanistanAbout Katherine: Katherine Jenerette is Captain in the US Army Reserve and a paratrooper from North Myrtle Beach, SC. She is serving with the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division ‘Task Force Arctic Wolves’ in the Horn of Panjwa’i in one of the most volatile districts in Kandahar Province (and Afghanistan). She is a former U.S. Congressional Field Representative for South Carolina’s First District and a North Myrtle Beach Planning Commissioner and was a Candidate for US Congress in 2010. Katherine was recently name as one of THE 45...

The mayor of Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan that was the birthplace of the Taliban, was killed in a suicide bombing on Wednesday, police said. Ghulam Haidar Hameedi died when a suicide bomber set off explosives hidden in his turban when the mayor was addressing citizens in the courtyard of the city hall, police General Abdul Raziq told AFP.

The half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been killed in an assassination attempt, officials say. Ahmad Wali Karzai, the younger half-brother of the Afghan president and leader of the Kandahar Provincial Council, was shot dead, presidential spokesmen Waheed Omar told the BBC. Initial reports suggest he was shot by his bodyguard in his house in Kandahar. A controversial politician, some saw him as a defender of Pashtun rights. Critics said he was a warlord mired in corruption who was openly involved in the drugs trade and had a personal militia at his disposal. The president repeatedly defended him, denouncing...

SNIPPET: ""If these attacks were aimed at seizing control of Kandahar city, as the Taliban proclaimed, they failed," a senior official from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. Shooting erupted after the first explosion hours earlier and insurgents opened fire from a five-storey shopping mall toward the governor's fortified compound, from where security forces returned fire as black smoke rose over the city."

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – More than 400 inmates — many of them Taliban insurgents — escaped from the main prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar overnight through an underground tunnel, an official said Monday. The massive jailbreak in Kandahar, the focus of much of the international military effort to defeat the insurgency, is a reminder that the Afghan government is still weak and easily thwarted in the south, despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. The escape comes after years of security upgrades and tightened procedures at the 1,200-inmate Sarposa Prison following a brazen 2008 Taliban attack...

Taliban attack Kandahar police station Saturday, February 12, 2011 1:33 PM Feb. 12, 2011 (United Press International) -- Taliban fighters and suicide bombers attacked Kandahar police headquarters Saturday and killed 15 officers, Afghan officials said. The attack began around noon with car bombs and the battle raged for hours, the BBC reported. "Fifteen people were killed and 45 others suffered injuries, and some of the wounded are in a critical condition," said provincial Gov. Tooryalai Wesa.

KANDAHAR: Taliban insurgents armed with bombs, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the Kandahar police headquarters Saturday during a bloody assault on the southern Afghan city that killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more. The bold afternoon raid showed insurgents are still able to launch deadly strikes on heavily fortified government institutions despite the past year's influx of US troops into Kandahar province, the Taliban's birthplace. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Fifteen of those killed were Afghan police officers, said provincial Governor Toryalai Wesa. Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said three Afghan soldiers, two civilians and...

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

Bound, masked and surrounded by heavily armed U.S. Marines, 20 of the most dangerous al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners arrived for indefinite incarceration at this remote Caribbean naval base. The prisoners' arrival Friday came four months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The prisoners face intense interrogation, especially concerning the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, accused by the United States of orchestrating the attacks. "These are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, ...

Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera has broadcast a tape that appears to show one of the 11 September hijackers reading his last will and testament. The channel also aired a brief clip of wanted Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, who is shown kneeling beside his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, as al-Zawahri praises the actions of the bombers. The channel identifies the hijacker as Ahmad al-Haznawi al-Ghamdi, a name which closely resembles that of Ahmed al-Ghamdi, who was on Flight 175 that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Al-Jazeera said the footage - which it says it checked...

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said. A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had...

(CBS) A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam and...

My eyes broke through the dried crust between my lashes. I was freezing, curled in the fetal position on my cot with an Army-issue sleeping bag wrapped around my body. I didn’t know where I was. I had never woken up here before. I tried to gain a sense of my surroundings using only my peripheral vision. The room was dark and damp. I looked at the indigo light on my digital watch. 0608. Where was I? … “Gah!” I shuddered like a little girl as a fat drop of arctic water fell on my face from the leaking roof....

OUTPOST NOLEN, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Elite U.S. special forces soldiers are relieving insurgent pressure on American outposts in the volatile Arghandab Valley with a series of night attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts. The raids, backed by a "Spectre" C-130 gunship and Afghan commandos, began four days ago in the village of Khosrow Sofla, and followed weeks of near-daily attacks by insurgents on American bases near the town of Jelawar. "We considered it an area of Taliban sanctuary, or at least of tacit or semi-permissive support," said U.S. Army Major Brendan Raymond, of Woodbridge, Virginia. Last month, the U.S. military said...

WASHINGTON, June 16, 2010 – Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, is the key to success in Afghanistan and the U.S. military is working with Afghan forces to turn the tide against the insurgents, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee today. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates testified on the fiscal 2011 Defense Budget request. Mullen told the senators that Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, is the birthplace of the Taliban. Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar ruled Afghanistan from a palace in Kandahar. Today,...

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is predicting that it'll be clear by year's end whether a NATO-led counterinsurgency effort in the Afghan Taliban stronghold of Kandahar is successful. Adm. Mike Mullen says the Kandahar campaign, which is planned to go forward next month, is vital to turning around the war. He says the southern Afghanistan city is as important to the overall war effort as Baghdad was to the U.S. troop increase in Iraq in 2007.

WASHINGTON – In the make-or-break struggle for Kandahar, birthplace of Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency, U.S. commanders will try to pull off the military equivalent of brain surgery: defeating the militants with minimal use of force. The goal of U.S.-led NATO forces will be to avoid inspiring support for the Taliban even as the coalition tries to root them out when the Kandahar operation begins in earnest next month. The ancient silk road city — a dust-covered, impoverished jumble of one- and two-story concrete and mud brick — may not look like much of a prize. But Kandahar, with a population of...

The Taliban launched yet another ground attack on a major Coalition military base in Afghanistan. A Taliban force launched a coordinated attack today against Kandahar Airfield, the largest base in southern Afghanistan and a major hub for operations in the south. More than 10,000 Coalition soldiers and contractors are based at the airfield. The attack began at about 8:00 p.m. local time when Taliban fighters moved close to the perimeter and fired mortars and rockets at the sprawling airbase. Three rockets landed inside the base; one struck a helicopter terminal and another a shopping center, Reuters reported. Four people were...

5/4/2010 - Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan -- Members of the 361st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron stood proud during a squadron activation ceremony May 1 on Kandahar Airfield. Col. John A. Cherrey, commander, 451st Expeditionary Operations Group, hosted the ceremony and extended his thanks to the more than 80-member unit. "In 2002, the unit was reactivated again, flying other aircraft. But this is not about the aircraft--it's about you, the members. It is about everything you all contribute--from the maintenance people on the ground to the pilots and commanding officers. You couldn't have a better squadron commander with Colonel Halford." said Colonel Cherrey....

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The United Nations scaled back its operations in the troubled southern city of Kandahar on Monday, relocating several foreign employees to Kabul and telling more than 200 Afghan U.N. workers to stay home amid rising violence. The announcement came hours after three bombings — one targeting a local police official — shook the city. The rash of attacks came ahead of a joint Afghan-NATO operation to try to wrest control of the area from Taliban militants. The strategy is to flood in troops, rout the militants and rush in new governance, development projects and security to win...

NATO forces will launch a major offensive in the Afghanistan city of Kandahar in June, sources told Fox News, part of a new war strategy that began earlier this year with the offensive in Marjah. The new strategy focuses on clearing Taliban strongholds while protecting the local populations and establishing Afghan control. Part of the objective in Kandahar is to be done with the "clearing phase" of operations by the beginning of August, before Ramadan, two senior U.S. officials told Fox News. The U.S. and its allies already are laying the groundwork for the offensive by removing corrupt politicians from...

The Taliban have called their deadly bomb attacks on the southern city of Kandahar a warning to NATO's top general that the insurgents are ready for the war's next major offensive in their heartland. The series of bombings Saturday night demolished buildings and killed dozens — including 10 people at a wedding — and prompted the provincial governor to plead for more security in the area. Fearful residents said they had no confidence that either government or foreign troops can protect them. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said Sunday that the attacks proved the insurgents were still able to operate...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The governor of Kandahar province demanded more security around Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday after a series of explosions killed dozens of people in the Taliban heartland — the target of the war's next major offensive by Afghan and international forces. The blasts, which occurred one after another for 25 minutes across Kandahar city Saturday night, indicate that the insurgents remain a potent force in the area where NATO plans an assault later this year, the follow-up to an operation that has driven militants from a key stronghold in neighboring Helmand province. Residents say Taliban militants can...

Two weeks of bitter fighting in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan is just the prelude to a major offensive this year in neighbouring Kandahar, a senior official in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama said yesterday. U.S. Marines are leading a 15,000-strong force of U.S., Afghan and other NATO forces in an assault on the town of Marjah in what has been billed as the biggest operation since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. "I think the way to look at Marjah, it's the tactical prelude to larger, more comprehensive operations later this year in Kandahar city," said a senior...

With the collapse of the Dutch government this weekend, its 1,600 soldiers are set to be withdrawn from the Taliban-ridden Afghan south shortly before Canada's 2,800 troops leave, creating a dangerous military vacuum there, the Prime Minister warned.

* Even the replacement of the Soviet-backed government and the rise of the Muslim-fundamentalist Taliban didn't quite end the adventures of the Il-76 in Afghanistan. On 3 August 1995, a MiG-19S fighter operated by the Taliban government intercepted an Il-76TD operated by the Russian airline Airstan and forced it to land in Kandahar. Taliban officials were annoyed at Russian backing of anti-Taliban Afghan forces and wanted to use the crew as hostages for the return of Taliban members believed to be held by the Russians. The Russian government negotiated to no effect; a scheme to perform a commando raid to...

Blog: "Report: Taliban, Not Government, Collecting Payments For Electricity Bills From Consumers In Helmand Province" SNIPPET: "The Taliban militants, not the Afghan government, are collecting payments from consumers of electricity generated from the Kajaki hydroelectric power project in the country’s southern Helmand province, according to an Afghan news website." SNIPPET: "Haji Mullah Sharafuddin, the administrative head of the Kajaki district, the Taliban have been usurping the state’s right to receive income from the huge dam in the form of bills in the Kajaki, Sangin and Zamindar districts." SNIPPET: "The Kajaki dam generates 32 megawatts of electricity, supplied not only to...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Air Force on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that it is flying a stealth unmanned aircraft known as the "Beast of Kandahar," a drone spotted in photos and shrouded in secrecy. The RQ-170 Sentinel is being developed by Lockheed Martin and is designed "to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward deployed combat forces," the air force said in a brief statement. The "RQ" prefix for the aircraft indicates an unarmed drone, unlike the "MQ" designation used for Predator and Reaper aircraft equipped with missiles and precision-guided bombs. Aviation experts dubbed the drone the...

The U.S. Air Force has confirmed to Aviation Week the existence of the so-called "Beast of Kandahar" UAV, a stealth-like remotely piloted jet seen flying out of Afghanistan in late 2007. The RQ-170 Sentinel, believed to be a tailless flying wing design with sensor pods faired into the upper surface of each wing, was developed by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), better known as Skunk Works. An Air Force official revealed Dec. 4 that the service is "developing a stealthy unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward deployed combat forces." The UAV had been...

American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2009 – Afghan soldiers and police, working with international troops, in recent days have detained insurgents in southern and eastern Afghanistan and seized large amounts of weapons and explosives, military officials reported. Yesterday, a joint force of Afghan and international troops detained several suspected insurgents after searching a series of buildings in Khost province and compounds in Kandahar province. The buildings in Khost were known to be used by a Haqqani terrorist cell responsible for distributing improvised explosive devices and IED-making material throughout the region. In a compound search north of Kandahar City,...

Two Canadian soldiers killed and five injured in an explosive device strikeCEFCOM NR–09.023 - September 6, 2009OTTAWA – Two Canadian soldiers were killed and five injured when an improvised explosive device detonated near their armoured vehicle in the vicinity of Dand District, approximately 14 kilometres southwest of Kandahar City at around 12:00 p.m., Kandahar time, on 6 September 2009. Killed in action was Corporal Jean-François Drouin from 5e Régiment du génie de combat serving as a member of the 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Régiment Battle Group based in Valcartier, Quebec. Killed in action was Major Yannick Pépin also from 5e...

Kandahar Airfield: Dusty chaos in perpetual motionA Griffon CH-146 tosses up clouds of dust in Kandahar Airfield. LCol Michel Villeneuve describes the dusty, noisy experience of working at the airfield. Tuesday, April 28, 2009Kandahar, Afghanistan – The effect is stunning, a total surprise. It’s like finding yourself, without warning, facing the bleak landscape of another planet. The whole thing can be summed up in two words: dust and noise. It’s chaos in perpetual motion. Trucks toss up clouds of dust so fine that it hangs in the air indefinitely; only nightfall brings it back down. The soil, which looks like...

JAKARTA, April 14 (IslamOnline) - Alleged Al-Qaeda operative, Yazid Sufaat, denied terror charges, while he admitted that he met two Arab nationals at his condominium in Kuala Lumpur two years ago, a news report from Malaysiakini.com said on Sunday. However, Sufaat, high on the FBI list of suspects from South East Asia, who might be members or operatives of the Al-Qaeda, stressed the duo could not be involved in the Sept 11 attacks as they were amputees shopping for prosthetic legs in Malaysia. The 37-year-old pathologist and former army captain, who is also a businessmen in Malaysia, told this to...

THE United States is building a command structure in Kandahar that will sideline the British general who takes command of southern Afghanistan in May. Brigadier-General John Nicholson, a senior American officer who previously served in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division, has already arrived in Kandahar to oversee the Afghan “surge”. Although technically he will be subordinate to the British general who takes command in May, he will in reality have control of all US troops, UK defence sources said last week. Nicholson’s bombproof, rocket-proof command centre will dwarf the British general’s headquarters, which ostensibly controls operations across southern Afghanistan....

Excerpt - A roadside bomb has killed an Afghan district chief and a police official in the southern Kandahar province. The attack took place when the district chief of Registan, Amir Mohammad, was driving home with police official Assadullah, police said. ~ snip ~

Reuters - TWIN SUICIDE BLASTS IN POLICE HQ IN AFGHAN SOUTH, SOME CASUALTIES - POLICE AFP via translation - KANDAHAR (Afghanistan) - Two explosions have hit Sunday the police headquarters in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, which apparently victims, according to an AFP journalist.

American battalion to help Canadian forces in Afghanistan Scott Deveau , Canwest News Service August 30, 2008 KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The United States has deployed a much-needed battalion of 800 troops to assist Canadian and Afghan Forces in Kandahar and to try to tame the province's Wild West. While the battalion has been active in Kandahar since early July, it has only just begun its operations in the past few weeks in the Maywand district, which borders on Helmand province to the west, and will serve as its new home. Until now, insurgents have been using Maywand as a corridor...

Kandahar tourniquet developed to save livesMonday, August 18, 2008Project Number:08-0556Kandahar, Afghanistan – Afghan soldiers can now save lives thanks to a medical prototype developed by Coalition forces. The Kandahar tourniquet, created for the Afghan National Army (ANA), will improve the survival rate of soldiers suffering serious injuries and massive hemorrhage. Imagine a dismounted infantry company mentoring team moving through a village in the Zhari District of Afghanistan. The team is weighed down with weapons, ammunition, radios, night vision devices and personal protective equipment. Every soldier is trained to deliver tactical combat casualty care and is equipped with advanced wound dressings,...

KABUL (AFP) - Six foreign troops including a Polish national were slain in bombings in Afghanistan on Saturday, the forces said, making it the deadliest day for international soldiers in the war-torn nation this year. Meanwhile, the Afghan army said five Afghan troopers and dozens of militants were killed in operations across the country in the last 24 hours. Four of the foreign troops serving in the US-led coalition were killed when insurgents attacked them with an improvised bomb and small arms fire just outside the strategic southern city of Kandahar on Saturday, the force said. "Four coalition service members...

MONARAI, Afghanistan (Reuters) - NATO and Afghan forces held mopping up operations, hunting Taliban fighters and burying the dead on Friday, after an air and ground offensive routed hundreds of insurgents from a valley near Kandahar city. The allies mounted the offensive on Wednesday after the Taliban took control of the Arghandab valley, 20 km (12 miles) northwest of Kandahar. Around 600 militants, including some who had escaped a week ago during a mass jail break from a prison in the city, had taken up positions in a cluster of villages, according to a provincial official and a Taliban spokesman....

ARGHANDAB DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of Taliban fighters have been killed or wounded after two days of fierce fighting over a strategic area just northwest of Kandahar City that insurgents had taken over at the start of the week. By Thursday, all that remained was the mopping up of small scattered pockets of resistance, jubilant political leaders and Afghan and Canadian military commanders told reporters from a mountainside perch overlooking the entire battlefield in a wide river valley. "This will give them a good lesson," Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said, referring to Taliban insurgents. Mr. Khalid said residents who had...

Excerpt - Afghan officials say military operations have cleared Taliban militants from the villages they had infiltrated outside southern Afghanistan's largest city. Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid said on Thursday that Taliban fighters had fled the villages in Arghandab district after overnight battles and air strikes. Khalid reported "hundreds" of Taliban wounded or killed over the last several days, but Nato officials have not confirmed that claim. ~ snip ~

Reports that suggest the Taliban have gained a footing in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province are “way overblown,” a Pentagon spokesman said today. Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters at a news conference that although an increased Taliban presence has been detected in the province, patrols conducted by Afghan National Police and coalition forces “found no evidence that militants control the area.” Press reports from the region said the Taliban had taken seven villages in the area and were poised for an attack on the city of Kandahar. “While in the area, coalition forces moved freely and met no resistance,” Morrell said....

Jail Blast Frees Hundreds Of Taliban Updated:22:34, Friday June 13, 2008 Hundreds of Taliban militants have escaped from a prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after a co-ordinated suicide bomb and rocket attack tore through the jail's defences. Nearly all of an estimated 1,150 prisoners fled when a Taliban suicide bomber blew open the main gate, officials said. Eyewitnesses reported that the fighters fired several rockets at various parts of the mud-built prison. "All the prisoners escaped. There is no one left," said Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai and the president of Kandahar's provincial council. Militants first exploded a...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents blew open the gate of a main prison in the Afghan city of Kandahar on Friday, allowing hundreds of prisoners including suspected militants to escape, officials said. Under cover of darkness, nearly all of an estimated 1,150 prisoners, including some 400 Taliban inmates, fled from the jail, two officials in the southern city of Kandahar told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Another official said between 750 and 800 prisoners had managed to escape, adding some prisoners were killed in a gun battle between police and Taliban fighters inside the jail. "I think scores of...

Like pensions and insurance, defence is one of those subjects to which too many people only pay attention when things go wrong. You might think, in the light of the past decade, that this would have changed. But you would be sadly mistaken. Even today, even after Iraq, few mainstream MPs without an immediate personal or constituency interest in the subject turn up in the Commons for defence debates. Many politicians who are thoughtful about a range of domestic issues still pass by on the other side when the conversation gravitates to the military. In this they reflect the British...

KABUL - Kandahar, where Canadian forces are responsible for security, is no longer the most hazardous place in Afghanistan, according to a senior Afghan general. "It is now Helmand that is the most dangerous, not Kandahar," said General Zahir Azimi in an interview over lunch this week in the Afghan capital. "This is because Canadian troops have done a great job in their area. They have changed Kandahar from being the most volatile place to the second most volatile place." The general, dressed in a sharp business suit rather than the green battle fatigues favoured by most Afghan commanders, said...

Canada to get help in Kandahar: U.S. commander Marines will help troops, search still on for more NATO troopsKABUL, Afghanistan -- Canada will get the additional NATO combat forces in Kandahar that Parliament is expected to demand if it approves a motion Thursday to extend the mission there to 2011, according to the White House and the U.S. commander of all 50,000 coalition forces in Afghanistan. Gen. Dan McNeill also told Canwest News Service in an exclusive interview Wednesday that U.S. Marines being deployed to southern Afghanistan in April for seven months, would help the Canadian battle group, fighting the...

Canadian soldier found dead at Kandahar base Updated Tue. Mar. 11 2008 11:05 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff Military officials are investigating the death of a 22-year-old soldier, whose body was found Tuesday in an accommodation room in Kandahar Air Field. The soldier has been identified as Bombardier Jeremie Ouellet, of the 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, based in Shilo, Man. Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche told reporters that the soldier was found at 2:15 p.m. Tuesday and that his death "is not related to combat." But he could not specify how Ouellet died. "The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service has...

Excerpt - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb 25 (Reuters) - A strong explosion shook Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar on Monday, but it was not immediately clear what caused it and if there were any casualties, residents and the interior ministry said. The blast occurred to the west of the city of Kandahar, where more than 100 people, most of them civilians, were killed in a suspected suicide attack last week. ~ snip ~