BREAKING NEWS: SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS 20 IN AFGHANISTAN

KABUL (AP) — A suicide bomber killed 20 people — including three children — in a market in central Afghanistan in the deadliest attack against Afghan civilians in more than three months.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-01-14-Afghanistan_N.htm?csp=34

Suicide bombings and other attacks have become the No. 1 killer of Afghan civilians in the intensifying war between U.S.-led forces and the Taliban. A United Nations report released this week found that the number of Afghan civilians killed in war-related violence rose last year to its highest level of the 8-year-old war — with nearly 70% of the deaths blamed on the Taliban and their allies.

Attacks against purely civilian targets are less common in Afghanistan than in Iraq, where most of the violence is between rival Islamic religious communities. The U.N. report said most of the 2,412 Afghan civilians killed last year were caught up in fighting between militants and NATO troops.
The attacker in Thursday's bombing detonated his explosives in front of a currency exchange shop located in an arcade of stores in the town of Dihrawud in Uruzgan province, a mostly ethnic Pashtun area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) southwest of the Afghan capital of Kabul. Thirteen people were wounded, according to a NATO statement.