(Updates toll, adds helicopter crash) By Hamid Shalizi KABUL, Jan 17 (Reuters) - A suicide car bomb killed a U.S. soldier and four Afghan civilians in the Afghan capital on Saturday, and one other U.S. soldier was killed when a helicopter crash-landed in eastern Afghanistan, officials said. The bomber penetrated tight security in the heart of Kabul, blowing himself up outside a U.S. base and the German embassy days before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama who has pledged to make Afghanistan a foreign policy priority. One U.S. soldier died in hospital of injuries received from the blast, and six U.S. soldiers and a U.S. civilian were wounded, the U.S. military said in a statement. Four Afghan civilians were killed and 19 wounded, the Interior Ministry said. Minutes after the blast, a sewage tanker and several cars were ablaze and there were blood stains on the road as police loaded bodies and wounded onto the back of pick-up trucks and ferried them to nearby hospitals, a Reuters witness said. Taliban militants, fighting to overthrow the Western-backed Afghan government and drive out foreign troops, claimed responsibility for the blast. The austere Islamist movement, driven from power by U.S.-led forces in 2001 for sheltering al Qaeda leaders behind the Sept. 11, attacks, has launched hundreds of suicide attacks in the last two years, but some 80 percent of the victims are civilians. CHINOOK DOWN In the northeast of the country, close to the border with Pakistan, one U.S. soldier was killed when a U.S. military Chinook helicopter, carrying seven personnel, made a crash landing, the U.S. military said. "Though the cause of the landing is currently undetermined, small arms fire was present at the time of the incident," a U.S. military statement said. Villagers nearby, in the Korengal valley of Kunar province, told Reuters it looked like the helicopter had been shot down and smoke was billowing from the scene of the crash. While the Taliban often take pot-shots at military helicopters, they have so far lacked the sophisticated surface-to-air missiles capable of posing a major threat to air transport which U.S. and NATO forces rely heavily on to transport troops and supplies around the rugged and mountainous country. Elsewhere, another suicide car bomber killed a civilian, and wounded three more and three policemen in a village in the eastern province of Nangarhar, a provincial spokesman said. Obama is expected to approve a request from commanders to double the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan from the 30,000 at present to counter the Taliban insurgency which has spread its influence from the south and east to the fringes of Kabul. The Taliban were able to regroup and relaunch their insurgency in mid-2005 after, analysts say, President George W. Bush's administration "took its eye off the ball" in Afghanistan by diverting crucial troops and resources to Iraq. The Taliban's campaign of guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings is aimed at demonstrating to ordinary Afghans that the Afghan government and its Western backers cannot bring security to the nation that has suffered nearly 30 years of war. (Additional reporting by Golnar Motevalli in Kabul, Ruhollah Wari in Kunduz and Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
ATTENTION EDITORS - REUTERS WOULD LIKE TO DRAW YOUR ATTENTION TO AN EXCLUSIVE SERIES OF PICTURES, KAB20 - KAB26 MOVED BETWEEN 1450 GMT AND 1500 GMT ON JANUARY 17, 2009 In ...
