Indian jawan killed in copycat attack on same Afghan road

The suicide bombing, which comes barely a month before the Indian road construction team was set to return after completing the 218-km project, is the fourth attack on Indian workers since the project began in 2004, taking the number of casualties to five.

Despite two layers of security by Afghan authorities and a strong presence of ITBP troops, three BRO workers and one ITBP jawan were killed in the three earlier attacks.

Dev Singh, the constable who died today, was part of the 400-strong ITBP force in Afghanistan that forms the inner security perimeter. The ITBP party was returning to its camp in Gurguri when a suicide bomber in a car blew himself up in front of their vehicle, said ITBP Additional DG Ranjit Sinha.

A statement from the Ministry of External Affairs strongly condemned the “latest act of terrorism on a project being executed for the development of Afghanistan” but said the project would continue till its completion this July. “Such acts will not deter us from fulfilling our humanitarian commitments,” it said.

The road project is considered crucial as it will give landlocked Afghanistan access to an Iranian deep sea port by tapping into the Garland Highway, which connects Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif with Kandahar and Herat. This will also allow India to bypass Pakistan and get a direct trade link to Afghanistan through Iran’s Chabahar deep sea port.

The attack seems to be a replica of the April 12 incident when a Taliban bomber rammed his Toyota car into a bus carrying Indian workers. While work on the project is drawing to a close, Afghanistan has warned India that the road project is high on the Taliban hit list.

Weeks before the last attack in April, Afghanistan’s interior minister had told Indian officials in Kabul about the increased threat to...