Insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan kill 19

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Insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan kill 19

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Insurgents have carried out a gun and bomb attack in Afghanistan, leaving at least 19 dead.

29 July,2011 12:01 am

Suicide attackers killed at least 19 people, 12 of them young children, when they targeted government buildings in southern Afghanistan.The assault in Uruzgan province also wounded 35 civilians, provincial officials said, and was the deadliest in the south in nearly six months.It began with two remote-controlled car bombs, one in front of the provincial governors compound and the other near the offices for regional state television channel, Uruzgan TV, said the governors spokesman, Ahmad Milad Modaser.Up to six suicide bombers then stormed the governors compound and the police chiefs compound in Tirin Kot, capital of Uruzgan, said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.Three bombers detonated their explosives shortly after the attacks began while the remaining attackers were locked in a hours-long gunfight with police inside the compounds, he added.The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said six militants were involved.Uruzgan is a largely rural and mountainous province north of Kandahar, to which it has many cultural and tribal links, and the Taliban have long had a presence there.The complex assault comes the day after the killing of the mayor of Kandahar, and the same month as the assassinations of President Hamid Karzais younger half-brother, widely considered the most powerful man in the south, the most senior cleric in Kandahar province, and a former governor of Uruzgan.Most of the dead were civilians, among them 12 children between the ages of 5 and 13 and two women, Modaser said. Three adult male civilians and two policemen were also killed.