ATTACK ON ANTI-DRUG FORCES KILLS 19 IN AFGHANISTAN

The assault in the east is the latest by militants against government
teams responsible for destroying the opium poppy crop. U.S. Marines
encounter little resistance in their offensive in the south.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- A suicide bomber and gunmen attacked a
drug-eradication team in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at
least 19 people and injuring more than 40 others, authorities said.

Twelve police officers were among the dead in the assault, the latest
in a string of attacks by militants against government teams
responsible for destroying the lucrative opium poppy crop during the
planting season. The insurgency is fueled with profits from the drug
trade.

The seven other people killed were civilians, the Interior Ministry
said in a statement. The attack was carefully coordinated, with
insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades and raking the area with
gunfire immediately after the explosion.

The injured included two Australian journalists, the Australian
Broadcasting Corp. said.

The attack took place in Nangarhar province, outside the provincial
capital of Jalalabad. Together with Afghanistan's south, Nangarhar
province, which borders Pakistan, is a major center of poppy
cultivation. Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world's opium.

"This event proves that . . . cultivation and production of narcotics
in Afghanistan are inseparably tied to terrorist forces," the Interior
Ministry said in a statement.

The attack came on the day U.S. Marines newly deployed in
Afghanistan's south began their first major offensive, seeking to
seize the town of Garmser in Helmand province, and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force
reported that one of its soldiers had been killed in Kapisa province
in eastern Afghanistan. The dead soldier's nationality was not
specified, but most forces in that area are American.

The Marines in the south encountered little significant resistance as
they secured roads leading to Garmser, said a spokeswoman, Capt. Kelly
Frushour. She gave no estimate of how long it might take to secure the
town.

The Marines were sent to bolster British, Dutch and Canadian forces
that have been struggling to contain the insurgency in the south, the
Taliban's former heartland.

Elsewhere, Afghanistan's chief of intelligence acknowledged to
lawmakers that the security services had received a warning about a
weekend assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai.

The Afghan leader escaped unharmed, but three other people, including
a member of parliament, were killed in a hail of gunfire. The brazen
attack on a ceremony in downtown Kabul, the capital, deepened many
ordinary citizens' security fears. Violence has claimed about 1,000
lives this year.

The intelligence official, Amrullah Saleh, told a session of
parliament that security services had "technical information" that
insurgents had plotted for more than a month to attack the ceremony,
which commemorated the victory of Afghan mujahedin over the Soviet
army in the 1980s.

Even before Saleh's disclosure, the intelligence and security services
had been under heavy criticism for failing to prevent the attack.

The ceremony was attended by dozens of dignitaries, including U.S.
Ambassador William Wood.

Although the president was uninjured, the attack raised questions
about the fitness of the Afghan police and military to assume
responsibility for security in Kabul at some point, as Karzai has said
he wants them to do.