Suicide bomb kills 8 Afghan police, NATO soldier

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A suicide bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint in southern Afghanistan Thursday, killing eight policemen and wounding 11, while a roadside bomb in the east left one NATO soldier dead, authorities said. The suicide attacker detonated his explosives in a room where the policemen were eating lunch at a checkpoint near Spin Boldak, a town on the Pakistani border, said Bismillah Khan, a local police official. Two of the checkpoint rooms were destroyed, Khan said. So far this year, more than 2,900 people - mostly militants - have been killed in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally of numbers provided by Western and Afghan officials.