(Lead)
DPA
Kabul, April 12 (DPA) Twin suicide attacks killed two Indian road construction workers and their driver Saturday, while Afghan and NATO forces killed 24 militants in an operation in southern Afghanistan, officials said. The attacks against Indian road construction workers took place in Khasrod district Saturday morning, when two men with explosives strapped to their bodies jumped in front of the road construction convoy, Ghulom Dastagir Azaad, provincial governor, told DPA.

One Indian engineer and his Afghan driver were killed at the scene, Azaad said. A diplomat from the Indian embassy in Kabul confirmed that a second Indian worker succumbed to his injuries en route to hospital.

Five other Indian workers and a police escort were wounded in the attacks, the officials said, while Azaad said that a third attacker, who was also wounded in the blasts, was arrested by Afghan police.

The Taliban recently have been relying heavily on the use of suicide and roadside attacks, both tactics widely believed to have been copied from Iraqi insurgents.

India is building a road of over 300 km between the towns of Zeranj and Delaram in Nimruz province, which connects the western region with the Iranian border.

In January this year, two Indian security personnel were killed and nine Indian and Afghan security officials were injured in a suicide attack.

Meanwhile, Afghan and NATO forces killed 24 Taliban insurgents and wounded eight others in an operation in Surkhakan village in Qalat, the provincial capital of southern Zabul province, Gulob Shah Alikhail, deputy governor for the province told DPA.

He said the operation that started Thursday night and continued until Friday evening caused no casualties among the combined forces.

More than 8,000 people - mostly insurgents - were killed in militancy last year, the bloodiest year since the fall of the Taliban regime some six years ago.
DPA