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9 killed in hotel suicide attack in S. Afghanistan

Xinhua, February 26, 2014

• At least nine people were killed while nearly 40 others wounded Tuesday night when a powerful suicide bombing ripped through a hotel in Tirinkot, the capital of southern Afghanistan's province of Uruzgan, the police said.

  "The initial reports said that a suicide attacker set off his explosive jacket inside a one-store hotel in the city, leaving nine people killed and 37 others wounded," the provincial police chief General Matiullah Khan told Xinhua.

  The blast destroyed the building, Khan said, adding that the number of the casualties might go up as several injured people remained in critical condition.

  All the victims were civilians, he noted. Officials said that the bomber rented a room in the hotel while he planned to launch an attack the following day but the target of the attack remained unknown.

  Afghan security forces sealed off the scene, while ambulances and civilian cars evacuated the victims to the city's hospitals.

  Several shops and cars were also damaged in the attack.

  No group has claimed responsibility for the incident but the Taliban insurgent group was likely behind such attacks.

  About 2,900 civilians were killed and nearly 5,700 wounded in conflicts and Taliban-led attacks in the war-torn country last year, according to UN officials.

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