KABUL, Afghanistan - A Taliban suicide bomber disguised as a woman and wearing a burqa blew himself up in a market in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing four NATO troops, officials said.
The international troops were gathered in the main market of Kapisa province's Nijrab district when the bomber detonated his explosives, said Sediq Sediqi, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in an email and said both French troops and Afghan police officers were killed in the explosion.
Sediqi said he had no reports of Afghan policemen being killed, but he said two civilians were wounded.
The majority of NATO troops in Kapisa province are French, but there are also other nations with forces there, including the United States.
The Kapisa bombing was the second deadly attack on NATO troops reported on Saturday. NATO forces said earlier in the day that a service member was killed in a bomb attack in the east. A spokesman for the international coalition, Maj. Martyn Crighton, said the attacks were not related and happened in different parts of the east.
The latest deaths bring to 13 the number of international troops killed in June. So far this year, 189 international service members have been killed in Afghanistan.
France has said it plans to pull its 3,300 troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, well before the 2014 goal for the majority of NATO combat troops to have left the country. Kapisa province has been a particularly deadly posting for French troops. In January, an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French troops on a base in the provinceSource:http://www.military.com
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