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Suicide bomber kills 23 in eastern Afghanistan attack
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the militant group had sent a suicide bomber to carry out the attack.
Sayed Ahmad Safi, spokesman for the governor of Laghman province, put the death toll at 23. He said two senior provincial officials had been killed along with Laghmani.
The bomber struck near a mosque in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam in mountains about 100 km (60 miles) east of Kabul.
A Reuters witness in the town saw a pickup truck carrying wounded people covered in blood. Eight ambulances left the scene, headed towards Jalalabad, the nearest major city.
A police source said Laghman governor Lutfullah Mashal had been wounded but Mashal's spokesman could not confirm the claim.
Violence in Afghanistan this year had already reached its highest level since the Taliban were ousted by US-backed Afghan forces in 2001 and escalated further after US and British troops launched major operations in Helmand province in mid-year.
The operations were the first under US President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and its allies and stabilize Afghanistan, with Washington sending tens of thousands of extra troops this year.
The commander of the 103,000-strong US and NATO force said this week that the situation was serious and deteriorating and the existing military strategy needed to be changed.
Opium cultivation, prices fall
In rare good news, the United Nations reported that land under opium poppy cultivation had fallen by nearly a quarter this year. The biggest fall was in southern Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province.
Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the opium used to make heroin in the world. Political leaders and military commanders believe the illegal trade funds the insurgency, fuels corruption and undermines the government they are fighting to support.
Prices for opium have tumbled, persuading farmers to switch to other crops, and 800,000 fewer Afghans now work in the trade, the U.N. report said. Drugs now make up just 4 percent of Afghanistan's economy, down from 27 percent in 2002, it said.
Afghan politics have been in limbo since an Aug. 20 presidential election, with partial results putting Karzai in the lead but not by enough to avoid a second-round runoff against his main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
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