Given the task definition and input, reply with output. In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

Two grenades exploded inside a mosque compound during morning prayers in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, wounding at least nine worshippers, an Afghan official said. 
  
 An Afghan Muslim devotee lives and prays in isolation in a mosque during Itikaf, the last ten days of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, in the city of Jalalabad east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
  
 The attack in eastern Khost province came a day after a series of bombs around Afghanistan killed at least 50 people in the deadliest day for civilians this year as Taliban insurgents and their allies ramp up violence across the country. The Taliban summer offensive this year coincides with Afghan police and soldiers taking on more responsibility for security while international forces start to withdraw. 
  
 Three grenades were thrown into the mosque compound in Baghi Sara area, Khost police chief Sardar Mohammad Zazai said. One exploded inside the mosque itself, and one in the courtyard outside. The third failed to detonate. 
  
 Zazai blamed Taliban insurgents for the attack. 
  
 "This was the work of the enemy," he said. "It cannot be a private dispute. Why would anyone be so angry to throw grenades in a mosque while people are praying?" 
  
 He said many of those praying were Afghans who work at the nearby U.S. base, Forward Operating Base Salerno. 
  
 Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid issued a statement that did not acknowledge the mosque attack but claimed an insurgent suicide bomber had attacked a U.S. base in Khost, causing several American casualties. 
  
 A spokesman for the NATO military coalition said Wednesday that there was no attack on the Salerno base, which is close to the mosque in Baghi Sara. Lt. Col. Hagen Messer said the American personnel at the base reported hearing gunfire from the mosque but that Afghan police were investigating. 
  
 The latest violence comes after a particularly bloody day for Afghanistan. Suicide bombers launched multiple attacks in remote Nimroz province in southwestern Afghanistan near the Iranian border on Tuesday, killing dozens of people, including shoppers buying sweets for a Muslim holiday. The bombings left charred and smoldering bits of cookies and dried fruit among the bodies on the ground. 
  
 A separate market bombing later Tuesday, this one in Kunduz in the north, killed 10 people, including five children. 
  
 And in the eastern province of Paktika, a car hit a roadside bomb. Four children died in the blast, provincial spokesman Mokhlis Afghan said, bringing Tuesday's death toll to 50 _ 11 police and 39 civilians. At least 110 people were wounded in all the attacks. 
  
 The attacks came as the Taliban and their allies step up their assaults in a display of force that often results in civilian carnage. Militants are especially trying to weaken the still-developing Afghan security forces, who are to assume control across their homeland in 28 months when most foreign combat troops will have left. 
  
 The Taliban "want to expand their influence _ show that they are everywhere," said Afghan political analyst Jawid Kohistani. "They want to show that the Afghan police are not strong enough so they are targeting the security forces and the government." 
  
 Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan said Tuesday's attacks were "acts of intentional mass murder." 
  
 "By targeting innocent civilians in populated areas, the insurgents have again shown they will kill non-combatants without hesitation to advance their backward-looking plans for Afghanistan. Once again, I call on (Afghan Taliban leader) Mullah Omar to rein in his murderers. His intentions not to target civilians are hollow," Allen said in a statement. 
  
 In past statements, Omar has asked his fighters to avoid civilian casualties. In one message in 2010, for instance, he said: "Pay attention to the life and property of the civilians so that ... your jihad activities will not become a cause for destruction of property and loss of life of people." 
  
 The U.N. reported last week that civilian deaths were lower in the first six months of 2012 than in the first half of 2011, but that an onslaught of summer attacks from insurgents were threatening to reverse that trend. In all, 1,145 civilians were killed in Afghanistan between January and June of this year, according to the U.N. report. ||||| KABUL, Afghanistan — In one of the year's deadliest days for Afghan civilians, at least 39 people were killed and more than 100 hurt Tuesday in attacks that spanned the country from north to south, including the brutal tactic of a suicide bombing staged at a hospital where victims of an earlier blast were being treated. 
  
 The more lethal of the two blasts in Nimruz province involved nearly a dozen would-be bombers, authorities said, although all but three were arrested or killed before or during the attack. Nonetheless, it showed the insurgents' willingness to sacrifice large numbers of fighters in a single operation and their continuing wherewithal to stage complex and coordinated attacks. 
  
 The blasts also reinforced a pervasive sense of insecurity felt by many Afghans. Civilian war casualties fell by 15% in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2011, the United Nations reported this month, but the advent of the warm-weather "fighting season" has seen an increase in violence across Afghanistan. 
  
 Most of those killed in the triple suicide bombing in Nimruz province, in southwestern Afghanistan, and a remote-controlled blast in Kunduz province in the north were people out shopping for their nightly iftar, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and for the holiday feast beginning this weekend that marks Ramadan's end. 
  
 There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks. The Taliban at times refrains from acknowledging having carried out suicide bombings and other strikes that kill large numbers of civilians. 
  
 Insurgents often stage near-simultaneous bombings and have sometimes targeted medical facilities. However, the notion of deliberately hitting a hospital to which injured people were being taken was shocking to most Afghans, even by this war's grim standard. The bombings were widely condemned, with Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander of the Western military in Afghanistan, calling them "intentional mass murder." 
  
 The spasm of bloodshed comes at a time when the NATO force is preparing to wind down its combat role and hand over responsibility for securing the country to the Afghan police and army by the end of 2014, raising troubling new questions as to whether the insurgency can be contained when foreign troops depart. 
  
 The first of the two attacks took place in the town of Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz. There, explosions tore through a bustling bazaar and two nearby sites, including the entrance to the city's main hospital. The second early-evening strike took place in Kunduz's Dasht-e Archi district, where a bomb attached to a motorcycle killed at least 10 civilians and injured more than two dozen in a shopping area, said Enaytullah Khaleeq, a provincial spokesman. 
  
 The carnage in Nimruz could have been even worse, given that police arrested several would-be bombers in raids before the attack and killed or detained several more during it, said Abdul Majid Latifi, the provincial deputy police chief. Latifi said most of the 29 victims were civilians but included four police officers. 
  
 In Nimruz and Kunduz, the targets were civilian areas, distant from any military installation. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization force is not even deployed in Nimruz, which borders Iran and volatile Helmand province. Last weekend, a policeman in the province turned his weapon on fellow officers, killing 10 of them. 
  
 Tuesday also brought a continuation of an ominous and increasingly common trend: assassinations of district officials. Two officials, including a district chief, and two of their bodyguards were killed in an insurgent ambush in Badakhshan province in the country's north as they were traveling home for this weekend's Eid al-Fitr holiday. 
  
 laura.king@latimes.com 
  
 Baktash is a special correspondent. |||||

A series of brutal attacks across Afghanistan made yesterday the deadliest day of the year so far for the country's civilians. At least 48 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in shootings and bombings, including a triple suicide bombing in the normally peaceful province of Nimruz, which borders Iran. Bombers there targeted a bazaar bustling with people buying treats for the end-of-Ramadan holiday this weekend, and then attacked a hospital where the injured from the first blast where being treated and where worried relatives had gathered, reports the Los Angeles Times. This morning, at least nine people were injured in a mosque in eastern Afghanistan when grenades were thrown inside during morning prayers. The attacks are seen as a Taliban show of force and an attempt to weaken the country's security forces, who will take control across the country in 28 months as NATO departs. The Taliban "want to expand their influence—show that they are everywhere," an Afghan political analyst tells the AP. "They want to show that the Afghan police are not strong enough so they are targeting the security forces and the government."