Suicide attack kills one, injures six in southern Afghanistan

Dec 7, 2006, 12:38 GMT

Kabul - A suicide attacker detonated his explosive-laden vehicle near a NATO and Afghan army forces convoy Thursday, killing one civilian and injuring another six in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

The suicide attack took place in downtown Kandahar city at around 2:20 p.m. when a convoy of Afghan army soldiers and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops was passing by the area. No soldiers were hurt and there was no damage to the convoy, Daoud Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Major Luke Knittig, ISAF spokesman, confirmed that their forces were targetted in a suicide attack.

Knittig said that there was no damage to convoy vehicles or casualties among the soldiers and the convoy continued on its way.

The attack came a day after three American citizens and five Afghan nationals working for an American private security company were killed in a similar attack which left another four people wounded in the northern part of Kandahar city.

In a separate incident, the district chief of Golran district of western Herat province was killed and his bodyguard wounded when unknown gunmen opened fire on his vehicle late Wednesday afternoon, said Mohammad Rasaa, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

Rasaa said the radical islamist group was responsible for the attack, a term usually used by Afghan government officials to mean Taliban insurgents.

Also on Wednesday, Mohammad Mubeen, district chief of Barmal, in eastern Paktika province, bordering Pakistan, escaped unharmed from a similar attack on his vehicle.

Rasaa said that after this attack, Mubeen's bodyguards responded with small arms fire and forced the attackers to flee.

Violence has been on the rise this year in Afghanistan, particularly in the south, and more than 100 suicide attacks have been reported so far in 2006 - a record - according to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

More than 230 Afghans have died in those bombings, as have 17 foreign troops and the three Americans killed Wednesday.