U.S. soldiers in their so-called terrorist hunt in Afghanistan

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan, January 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – An explosion killed 18 people traveling on a bus near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Friday, January 31, an Afghan official and witnesses said.

An aid worker in Kandahar said the explosion was an accident caused when the bus ran off the road and hit a landmine near the Rambasi bridge in a village 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) south of Kandahar.

However, an Afghan official said the blast was deliberate and caused by a remote-controlled bomb planted by anti-government extremists, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

"Eighteen people have been killed and two are seriously injured," said Fazal Dil Agha, district commissioner in this border town of Spin Boldak, 100 kilometers (62 miles) south-east of Kandahar.

"It was a remote-controlled bomb placed underneath a bridge. When a wagon (passenger bus) crossed the bridge it was blown up."

Quoting doctors treating the injured at a nearby hospital, the aid worker said two buses collided, forcing one off the road and onto a landmine.

"Two buses were crossing close to a bridge on a minor road close to where there were mines," he told AFP by telephone, declining to be named.

"One of the buses left the road and drove over a mine, causing the explosion.

 Witnesses said limbs lay strewn around the blast site among pieces of the shattered bus.

Afghanistan is littered with an estimated 10 million landmines after 23 years of conflict, making it one of the world's most heavily mined countries.

Between five and 10 people are wounded in mine blasts daily, a landmine awareness conference was told in October.

Kandahar is the site of the U.S. military's second largest base in Afghanistan.

Agha linked the bomb to a band of ‘extremists’ who fought pitched battles with some 300 U.S. forces in the cave-pocked Adi Ghar mountains 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) north of Spin Boldak on Monday and Tuesday, January 27, 28.

At least 18 people were killed in the firefight, the U.S. forces' biggest since the Operation Anaconda offensive in March 2002. Hunts of the Adi Ghar caves yielded pack animals, boots and cooking oil, suggesting the area had been used as a supply and operations base.