-0.2°C Not observed 
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Taliban unleashed a wide swath of destruction across Kandahar City over the weekend in what the militants warned was a demonstration of their resolve to fight for their heartland.
Using a combination of suicide attacks and remote controlled bombs, insurgents struck five times on Saturday and Sunday, leaving 31 people dead and 57 injured.
The power attacks, which appeared to be aimed at civilians, turned shops near a bustling market to powder and scattered bits of concrete. They once again targeted the notorious, fortified Sarpoza prison, leaving a observation tower pock-marked and blackened, but still standing.
The co-ordinated assaults, which also included the home of President Karzai's half-brother and a foreign construction company, came against the backdrop of NATO's preparation for an all-out offensive this spring.
Kandahar is the spiritual home of the hard-line Islamist movement and much of the Taliban's campaign over the last four years has been aimed at retaking the centre of 800,000 people.
"Gen. McChrystal has said that soon they will start their operations, and now we have already started our operations," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi Ahmadi told The Associated Press by telephone.
Gen. Sardar Mohammad Zazi, the provincial police chief in Kandahar, said seven police officers died in the weekend attacks.
The Saita Construction Company, a Japanese joint-venture company that's doing road repair work, was the target Sunday morning.
One Pakistani worker was killed and seven wounded.
Local hospital officials say construction workers had just begun assembling outside the building when the suicide attack took place.
The company has been a favourite target of the Taliban, with five workers recently murdered in a drive-by shooting and last August the same headquarters was hit with a series of powerful car bomb blasts just before the presidential election.
One of the bomb blasts on Saturday shook the busy Aljadid market, while others went off outside police headquarters and the city's prison, which was site of a massive attack in June, 2008.
The last explosion went off close to the home of Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is head of the provincial council.
On Sunday, shopkeepers inspected the ruins of their businesses, many of which had their fronts blown off. The mood in the city was tense throughout the day.
Muktar, an attendant at the local hospital who like many Afghans goes by only one name, says the city's residents feel helpless in the face of the Taliban onslaught.
"Why are they hunting innocent civilians?" he said while tending to rows of wounded at the Mirwais hospital. "This is disgusting."
At least two children were killed in the bloody weekend rampage, said Muktar. One of them was a 10-year-old boy, whose father was admitted to hospital suffering from head trauma.
"We have no CT machine to diagnose his injury," Muktar added.
The Taliban recently published a war manifesto that supposedly forbids direct attacks on civilians and encouraged guerrilla fighters to show restraint when bystanders are around.
There were calls Sunday by Afghan government officials for dramatically increased security around the city, which is the spiritual home of the Taliban.
U.S., NATO and Afghan forces are planning an offensive in Kandahar province later this year, a follow-up to an ongoing military operation in Helmand province. Thousands of troops worked for three weeks to seize control of the district of Marjah from the Taliban.
Militants control a number of key villages outside the city and use them as springboards for raids.
-With files by A.R. Khan.
