Four of the dead are German soldiers, 30 more soldiers and bystanders were injured.
As terrible this is it still is telling that attacks like this are rare enough to be newsworthy in a country that has been liberated less than 18 months ago. It really seems as if the remaining Taleban and Islamists in general are no longer capable of conducting real operations and are reduced to blowing themselves up like Palestinian terrorists.
Going after European targets is a seriously boneheaded moveon the side of the Islamists; for all their hypocrisy about the American approach to the war on terror European governments are much less concerned with respecting the human rights of terrorists once they feel forced into all-out war. The European camps are going to be much less pleasant than that at Guantamano Bay, not to mention much larger.
I have half-seriously thought that Afghanistan should be turned over to the Germans entirely, thought with US financing. And not out of malice. The Germans have no track record in the region at all, so they start out with a clean slate. It is a large but not massive project, within their capabilities. It would allow them to rotate their army through a semi-hostile Islamic country and gain valuable experience with this type of operation.
Plus, I have heard several times that, for whatever reason, Afghans have a great deal of respect for Germans.