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Bomb attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan, kills 3 and wounds 13

The bombing, which killed at least one Afghan police officer, joins an increase in attacks against Afghan law enforcement since NATO drastically drew down forces in the country last year.

By Fred Lambert
Afghan police officers stand at Friendship Gate after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in the southern province of Kandahar on July 5, 2013. Two years later to the day, an improvised explosive device strapped to a motorcycle detonated in Kandahar, killing an Afghan policeman and two civilians. File photo by Matiullah/UPI
Afghan police officers stand at Friendship Gate after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in the southern province of Kandahar on July 5, 2013. Two years later to the day, an improvised explosive device strapped to a motorcycle detonated in Kandahar, killing an Afghan policeman and two civilians. File photo by Matiullah/UPI

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 5 (UPI) -- An improvised explosive device attached to a motorcycle in Kandahar, Afghanistan, killed a police officer and two civilians on Sunday, according to reports.

Thirteen people, including two police officers and 11 civilians, were injured in the blast, Xinhua news agency reports.

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The bomb went off as a police unit patrolled by at 6:45 p.m., Zia Durrani, police spokesman of Kandahar province, told Xinhua.

The attack, which remains unclaimed, comes amid an increase in militant assaults on Afghan security forces.

According to U.S. and Afghan officials, about 330 Afghan soldiers and police are killed or wounded each week in Taliban attacks, and the level of casualties among those forces in the first 15 weeks of 2015 was 70 percent higher than during the same period last year.

The militants claimed to have killed up to 25 police officers in raids against checkpoints -- some manned by two to three officers -- in remote areas of Helmand province last month.

About a half-dozen Taliban gunmen were killed in a foiled attack on Afghanistan's Parliament in Kabul in June.

Around the same time, Afghan security forces claimed to have killed about 17 Taliban in a counter-attack in a district of the country's northern Kunduz province, which the militants had overrun.

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Later the same month, a Taliban suicide car bomb attack targeting a NATO convoy near the Kabul airport injured 17 civilians.

Amid the violence, Afghan and Taliban leaders met earlier last month for informal talks in Norway.

After U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011, coalition forces officially handed the security operation to Afghan forces in December 2014.

The president's original timetable called for a reduction of U.S. troops in the country to 5,500 by the end of 2015, but in late March Obama announced the U.S. force would maintain its current posture of nearly 10,000 troops, used for advising and assisting Afghan forces, until the end of the year.

According to the United Nations, Taliban attacks in 2014 killed 3,700 civilians and wounded up to 6,800.

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