(Image Source: Press TV)

BY BLAKE HANSON

Insurgents launched several attacks across Afghanistan Saturday, including a suicide bombing that killed 13 American NATO troops. The BBC reports from the scene...

“It seems to have been a massive car bomb which was detonated as a bus full of NATO troops was passing by. Now Peter, those buses are usually fairly seriously armoured, so for that explosion to penetrate the bus, it must have been quite large.”

Reports say at least 20 people were killed in the attack. And as you might have guessed, a terror group has already stepped forward. Here’s Fox News.

“The Taliban is claiming responsibility. It’s the deadliest single ground attack on foreign forces in 10 years of war in Afghanistan.”

According to The New York Times, these large-scale attacks are fast becoming the preferred tactic for the Taliban.

“Such high-profile attacks have been seen as a shift in Taliban strategy to compensate for the growing success of the coalition at reducing the insurgency’s overall activity, at a time when Kabul and other areas of  the country have been handed over from NATO to Afghan government control.”

And a writer for Time Magazine says even more troubling is the location of the attack.

“More important than the death toll, however, is the fact that this is the latest attack in the heart of Kabul, the nation's capital. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been dismissed by some for years as merely ‘the mayor of Kabul,’ but U.S. officials continue to be distressed over the Taliban's ability to strike inside the city.”

As if the bombing wasn’t enough, the Los Angeles Times reports there were several other insurgent attacks across the country Saturday.

“An attacker in an Afghan military uniform in the southern part of the country also turned his weapon on members of the U.S.-led military coalition, killing two before he was killed in return fire. And in a third incident in Eastern Afghanistan, a female suicide bomber wearing a burqa tried to enter a government building. She was killed, according to local news reports, when guards became suspicious of her behavior and opened fire...”

It’s not yet known if the attacks were linked.