13 American troops killed in Kabul suicide bombing

All 13 NATO service members who were killed in a suicide bombing in the Afghan capital on Saturday were American troops, the Pentagon said. The U.S. Defense Department confirmed the nationalities shortly after NATO issued a statement saying that 13 of its forces were killed in the blast. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which also killed four Afghans, including a policeman. Earlier, Hashmat Stanekzai, a spokesman for the Kabul police chief, said, “A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of foreign troops but there are no details about casualties yet.” A female suicide bomber, meanwhile, blew herself up on Saturday as she tried to attack a local government office in the capital of Kunar province, a hotbed of militancy in northeast Afghanistan along the Pakistan border. Abdul Sabor Allayar, deputy provincial police chief, said the guards outside the government’s intelligence office in Asad Abad became suspicious of the woman and started shooting, at which point she detonated her explosives. Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces conducted operations earlier this month, killing more than 100 insurgents in an effort to curb violence in rugged areas of Kunar where the coalition and Afghan government have a light footprint. Farther south along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Afghan and coalition forces captured two leaders of the Haqqani network and two other suspected insurgents in Sarobi district of Paktika province, the coalition said. Haqqani fighters, who are affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, are heavily rooted in Paktika and neighboring Paktia and Khost provinces. One of the captured leaders provided insurgent fighters with funding, weapons, supplies and hideouts, and the other coordinated attacks against Afghan forces, the coalition said.