A suicide bomber, meanwhile, attacked a NATO convoy in Kabul yesterday but instead killed two passers-by. They were among 18 people killed yesterday, officials said.
In another bomb attack yesterday, the mayor of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan survived a roadside bomb blast that killed a civilian and wounded two others, said Najibullah Khan, a police spokesman.
Clashes and attacks in the eastern province of Kunar surged 131 percent in January and February from the same period in 2008, said Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green, a US spokeswoman.
Bomb and gunfire attacks are up in part because 700 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division were deployed to Kunar in early January.
Kunar's rise in violence may be a sign of what the 17,000 US troops that President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan will face later this year. Hoping to reverse Taliban gains, the troops will move into areas of the country where few other foreign or Afghan soldiers have had a long-term presence.
Many of those regions are likely to have conditions similar to Kunar, where enemy is immersed in the population and most of the residents do not have allegiance to either the government or the militants, Nielsen-Green said.
The 10th Mountain troops moved into Kunar, near the Pakistan border, while the Pakistani military was conducting a six-month offensive against militants in its Bajur tribal area, which has been an important safe-haven for insurgents.
Bajur is a suspected hiding place for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and Pakistan's offensive there earned praise from American officials concerned that militants were using the area as a base from which to plan attacks in Afghanistan.
Last week, Pakistan signed a peace deal with the Mamund tribe after claiming victory in its fight. The tribe controls a large swath of Bajur and its ranks have yielded many Taliban leaders. The tribe, whose members straddle the Afghan-Pakistan border, has agreed to stop sheltering foreign fighters and hand over local Taliban leaders there.
But while Pakistan has seen success in Bajur, violence has more than doubled in Kunar across the border in Afghanistan.
