AFGHANISTAN - New US Commander Predicts More Suicide Attacks This Year.

A suicide car bomber attacks an Afghan Army convoy in western Afghanistan, wounding three soldiers and two civilians. The bomber blew himself up next to a bus carrying the soldiers near the airport in the western city of Herat, said General Fazludin Sayar, deputy corps commander in western Afghanistan. Three soldiers and two civilians were wounded, Sayar said. The bomber died in the blast. Suicide bombings have so far been rare in western Afghanistan. Militants have mostly undertaken their suicide attacks in the country's south and east. The incoming commander of the US troops in Afghanistan said Jan 29 that he expected Taliban militants to enact more suicide attacks this year than in 2006, when militants set off a record 139 such bombings. Major General David Rodriguez, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, said military leaders expected an increase in all kinds of attacks as the weather became warmer. "We're expecting an increase in the suicide bombers and some of the other tactics that they have believed are successful", he said. "So we expect to see that as well as the normal standoff type attacks and harassing kind of attacks on Afghan government officials, Afghan nationals, security forces, as well as coalition forces". Rodriguez, who takes command from Major General Benjamin Freakley on Friday, traveled to the eastern province of Paktika, next to the Pakistan border, on Jan 29 to be briefed by military leaders and the provincial governor. The governor of Paktika, Muhammad Akram Akhpelwak, told Rodriguez that Taliban militants have bases across the border in Pakistan and that he hopes US forces can help stop the flow of fighters crossing into Paktika. "If we just focus on one side of the border, we won't be successful", Akhpelwak told US leaders. Rodriguez called the border situation "harmful" to both Afghanistan and Pakistan. "We will continue to strengthen the security on the border, which is an important issue because of all the infiltration that occurs", he told the governor. The Taliban last year undertook a record number of attacks, and about 4,000 people, most of them militants, died in insurgency-related violence, according to a tally by The AP based on reports from Afghan, NATO and coalition officials. Suicide attacks in 2006 totaled 139, up from 27 in 2005, according to US military numbers. NATO has said suicide attacks last year killed 206 Afghan civilians, 54 Afghan security personnel and 18 soldiers from NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Lt Col David Accetta, a US military spokesman, said militants would set more suicide attacks "because nothing else they've tried works". Pres Hamid Karzai renewed his call for talks with the Taliban and other groups battling his government. Rodriguez arrived at a time of increased attention on Afghanistan. The Defense Department last week extended the tours of 3,200 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division by four months, and the Bush administration said it would ask Congress for $10.6 bn for training Afghan security forces and reconstruction. Rodriguez said that the development of the Afghan Army - a key US goal - "is moving in the right direction", but that it will need international support for at least a couple years. More than 90% of US patrols in Paktika Province last year were joint patrols with the Afghan Army. Human Rights Watch said more than 1,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2006, many as a result of attacks by the Taliban and other anti- government forces in the country's south. The figure from Human Rights Watch also included at least 100 civilian deaths caused by NATO and US-led troops facing a record number of Taliban attacks. In all, more than 4,400 Afghans died in conflict-related violence, twice as many as in 2005 and more than in any other year since the US helped remove the Taliban in 2001, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.