A suicide car bomber blew himself up next to a police truck bringing a southern Afghan official to work early Monday, killing five children nearby, officials said.
The blast struck about 9 a.m. local time near a market area, said Ahmadullah Nazak, the chief of Kandahar province’s Dand district.
“I dropped down. Then I heard a second explosion,” Nazak said. “It hit our car, but it didn’t injure me.” Five children who were near the site of the blast were killed, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. A bodyguard who was driving with Nazak was wounded, he said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though it fits the pattern of Taleban attacks targeting government officials in the south. As additional U.S. forces have poured into southern Taliban strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, Taliban insurgents have mounted a counter-campaign of bombings and assassinations aimed at those affiliated with the Afghan government.
Also in the south, two soldiers were killed on Sunday in separate incidents, says Britain’s Ministry of Defence. The ministry announced today that a soldier from the 1st Battalion Scots Guards was killed in Lashkar Gah District of Helmand Province by small arms fire. In the second incident, a soldier from 40 Commando Royal Marines was killed by an explosion in Sangin, Helmand Province.
The ministry did not immediately release the names of the victims. In the east, meanwhile, NATO forces said they captured a local insurgent commander in Paktia province and killed “several insurgents” in an air strike on a vehicle after troops saw the commander putting an anti-aircraft gun inside. A spokesman for NATO forces, Sgt. Michael Reinsch, declined to say how many insurgents were killed.
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