Demining suspended following bomb attack on deminers

All demining work stopped in southern and western Afghanistan following an insurgent bomb attack, which killed two and injured five deminers on the Kandahar-Herat highway on Wednesday, mine clearance agencies confirmed to IRIN. The victims were Afghan nationals working for the Mine Detection and Dog Centre (MDC). According to MDC, their vehicle was blown up by an improvised explosive device (IED) on a bridge in the vicinity of Grishk City in Helmand province. The deminers were returning from a mine clearance field on a road construction site on the Kandahar-Herat highway. "The vehicle was blown up when it reached Grishk bridge and according to our field staff the bomb was in a bicycle parked on the side of the bridge," Shohab Hakimi, the director of MDC, told IRIN in the capital, Kabul. The area has been the scene of several IED incidents in the recent past, because of the continued reconstruction of Kandahar-Herat main route and frequent movement of various aid and government agencies using that road. Wednesday's incident followed a similar bomb attack on 18 May on another MDC vehicle in the south-western Farah province. Three MDC workers were killed as a result of that blast. Hakimi said that in less than two weeks, three insurgent attacks have taken place on deminers in the same area. "After the 18 May attack on the MDC, several deminers of MCPA [Mine Clearance and Planning Agency] were injured in another attack in the area," he noted. The NGOs were already on high alert following the assassination of a religious leader on Tuesday and the killing of at least 19 people and injuring of 52 others in a suicide bomb attack on a mosque on Wednesday. Both incidents took place in the southern city of Kandahar. "The NGO community have to seriously think about whether or not that part of the country is worthy of the risk any more," Nick Downie, head of the Afghan NGOs safety office (ANSO), told IRIN. Wednesday's attack brings the number of local aid workers killed in 2005 to more than 10 people. More than 20 foreign and Afghan aid workers were killed in insurgent attacks in 2004.