Amir Shah: Suicide Bomber Kills 13 Americans in Afghanistan

A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a van into an armored NATO bus Saturday, killing 13 American troops and four Afghans on a busy street in Kabul in the deadliest attack on coalition forces in more than two months, and a major setback for the US led coalition as it begins to draw down combat troops. The explosion sparked a fireball and littered the street with shrapnel and twisted metal hulks. Heavy black smoke poured from burning wreckage at the site along a four-lane highway frequently used by foreign military trainers in the southwestern section of the city. Underscoring the difficulties ahead, the brazen assault occurred on the same day that top NATO and Afghan officials were meeting elsewhere in Kabul to discuss the second phase of shifting security responsibilities to Afghan forces in all, or part of 17 of the country's 34 provinces. It also was a blow to efforts by the US and President Hamid Karzai to forge peace with the fundamentalist Taliban movement as NATO plans to withdraw all its combat troops from the country by the end of 2014, with support for the costly war reaching new lows in the West. Saturday's attack broke a relative lull in the Afghan capital, an area where NATO has already shifted security responsibilities to the Afghans. While checkpoints dot the central part of the city, attacks occasionally take place, with many blamed on the Haqqani network, an al-Qaida and Taliban-linked movement that operates out of Pakistan!