Four Taleban suicide bombers disguised in army uniforms detonated a car bomb and stormed a government office Wednesday, killing 13 people. The four attackers – who witnesses said wore Afghan military uniform – were also killed, two in suicide bombings and two shot dead by security forces, the interior ministry said. The assault highlighted the increasingly deadly tactics that Taleban militants are learning from Al-Qaeda, an expert said. The multi-pronged raid mirrored an attack in Kabul in February when militants assaulted three government buildings simultaneously, killing 20. Wednesday's attack on Kandahar's provincial council office killed seven civilians and six police officers, President Hamid Karzai's office said. Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of the council and President Karzai's brother, said the attack came during a meeting of tribal leaders. He said 17 people were wounded. The attack began just before noon, when a suicide bomber in a vehicle full of explosives blew himself up at the office gates, opening the way for three other attackers in Afghan army uniforms and AK-47s to storm the building, Ahmad Wali Karzai said. He said he was the target of the attack; he did not say how he knew he was the target. Gen. David Petraeus, the top US general in the Mideast, said Wednesday that the Taleban and other insurgents are growing stronger and that the US military will fight “relentlessly and aggressively” against extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al-Qaeda and Pakistani militants are teaching advanced skills to the Taleban, and Al-Qaeda operatives are embedding with Taleban forces to “plus-up their capabilities,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. “They're graduating from, in essence, rural guerrilla warfare to sophisticated urban operations,” Hoffman said. “It's skill sets that you're not going to acquire on your own. It takes tutoring and mentoring.” The Kandahar assault comes amid a burst of violence in Afghanistan, where some 60 militants have died in battles the last three days. President Barack Obama – who is deploying an additional 21,000 US forces to bolster the record 38,000 already in the country - has said the US will increase its focus on the “increasingly perilous” situation here. __
