Rockets from Pakistan kill 2 near Afghan NATO base

At least two civilians were killed when militants on the Pakistan side of the border fired rockets at NATO military outposts in eastern Afghanistan, police said Sunday. NATO officials said that the military responded by firing artillery rounds at the site from where the rockets were launched late Saturday, but there were no reports of insurgent casualties. "Several rockets were fired on two NATO bases. One rocket landed on a civilian home which killed a woman and a child," Khost's deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Yaqoub Mandozai told AFP. "The rockets were fired from the Pakistan side of the border," he said, adding that a number of people were injured. However, Abdul Majid Mangal, a doctor in the city's hospital said two dead children and 10 other wounded were admitted to his hospital. He said the civilians had suffered shrapnel wounds. "Two dead children and ten people including women and children were admitted to our hospital," the doctor told AFP. In a separate incident NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Saturday that one of its bases and an Afghan army outpost were attacked from Pakistan in the neighboring province of Paktika. There were no casualties. ISAF in a statement said it launched several artillery rounds on militants firing the devices from across the border. The attacks come days after President Hamid Karzai threatened to target insurgent leaders on the Pakistani side of the lawless tribal region where Afghan and NATO officials say Islamic militants maintain training camps. Meanwhile a suspected would-be suicide bomber detonated himself up after a security guard fired at him in the southern province of Helmand, also on Saturday, a police commander said. "The bomber exploded after the guard fired at him. The guard and the bomber were killed," provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said, adding the militant was trying to climb up a wall into the house of a tribal chief.