Five Afghan civilians, NATO soldier killed in blasts leaving one dead (2nd Lead)

Mar 1, 2010, 11:12 GMT

Kandahar, Afghanistan - A suicide bombing of a NATO convoy killed four civilians and a NATO soldier Monday in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar while a car bomb in the provincial capital killed another civilian, officials said.

The suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into an armoured NATO vehicle as the convoy was passing a bridge, tossing the military vehicle into a ravine below and destroying the bridge, said Zalmai Afzali, a spokesman for Kandahar's governor.

The attack happened in the Tarang area of the Daman district near the Kandahar airfield, the second-biggest military base for US and other NATO troops in the country after Bagram near Kabul, said Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, the deputy provincial police chief.

The attack killed four civilians and wounded another, the Interior Ministry said.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul confirmed that one ISAF soldier was killed in the attack but did not reveal the soldier's nationality. The spokesman asked not to be named, citing alliance policy.

Afzali said that according to information provided by Afghan security forces on the ground, four NATO soldiers were also wounded in the attack.

Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousif Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack and said 11 foreign soldiers were killed in the bombing.

Separately, one civilian was killed and 16 other people, including nine Afghan police officers, were injured Monday in a car bombing in Kandahar city, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The vehicle, packed with explosives, had been deserted inside the parking lot of the main police headquarters in the city, Afzali said.

The attacks came a day after 11 Afghan civilians, including two children and two women, were killed when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside mine in neighboring Helmand province.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the Helmand attack Monday and called it 'an inhumane and un-Islamic act,' the presidential palace said in a statement.

A total of 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops are taking part in a major offensive in Helmand. That operation has made slow progress into its third week against continued resistance by Taliban fighters.

US and NATO officials said the Helmand offensive was a prelude to a larger operation in Kandahar. About half of an additional 30,000 US troops being sent to Afghanistan by this summer are to be deployed in and around Kandahar province.

Kandahar and Helmand are Taliban strongholds and have been the centre of its insurgency in the past eight years. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement and was the headquarters of its leader, Mullah Omar, from 1996 to late 2001 when the Taliban's fundamentalist Islamist government was overthrown in a US-led offensive.