A passenger truck ran off the road in a remote mountainous region of Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing 15 people and wounding 56, an official said. Four bomb attacks around the country killed one Afghan and one NATO soldier.
The truck ran off the road in the northeastern province of Badakhshan. President Hamid Karzai ordered Afghan army helicopters to help evacuate the wounded to better hospitals in Kabul, the capital, but bad weather was hindering that effort, said Abdul Mamoon Jalali, the provincial health director.
Jalali said he hoped to transfer 20 of the most critically wounded. Women and children were among the 15 people killed, he said.
The victims were riding in the back of a trailer truck when it slipped off the road six miles outside Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan, which shares borders with Pakistan, China and Tajikistan.
A roadside bomb in the east killed a soldier Wednesday with NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Four others were wounded. ISAF did not release the nationalities of the casualties, though most troops in the east are American.
In the eastern province of Khost, meanwhile, two suicide bombers in a vehicle tried to attack a U.S. military outpost but were stopped by Afghan police at a checkpoint, said Gen. Mohammad Ayub, the provincial police chief. Police and U.S. coalition soldiers opened fire and killed both attackers. Ayub said no one else was killed.
Two coalition service members were wounded in the attack, said 1st Lt. Nathan Perry, a coalition spokesman.
In Helmand province, a suicide bomber on a motorbike targeted a police truck but missed, said Doulad Wazir, the governor's spokesman. One civilian was killed, he said.
Taliban militants have used an increasing number of suicide attacks in the last two years in their fight against Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces. More than 1,200 people have died in violence in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count.