Road blast kills six Afghan civilians: governor
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — Six civilians were killed in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan Monday while guards separately shot dead a would-be suicide bomber, officials said, in fresh Taliban-linked unrest.
The blast tore through a minibus in the southern province of Zabul, killing five Afghan men and a 15-year-old boy, Naw Bahar district governor Zarif Khan told AFP. Two other people were wounded.
Khan blamed the attack on the "enemies of peace" -- a reference to Taliban insurgents who regularly plant bombs intended to hit Afghan and international troops trying to put down extremist violence.
Roadside bombings are a hallmark of the Taliban insurgency.
In a separate incident, a suicide attacker was shot and killed as he attempted to enter the intelligence department in the Zabul capital, Qalat, late Sunday, deputy provincial governor Gulab Shah Alikhail told AFP.
A guard, suspicious of a man walking towards him, ordered the would-be bomber to "freeze" but the attacker ignored him, Alikhail said.
"After he ignored a warning shot, the guard shot him in the head and killed him. Later they found out he was wearing a 10-kilogramme (22-pound) explosives vest," he said.
The attempted attack comes a day after twin suicide blasts inside the police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar killed two policemen, with three more people dying overnight, according to an official.
Nearly 40 people were wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blasts, which were a minute apart.
Also Sunday a suicide attacker blew himself up near Italian NATO soldiers in the western city of Herat but caused no casualties, according to local police.
The day before a suicide attacker, also said to be from the Taliban, had shot dead a guard outside a government building in the southwestern town of Zaranj and then blown himself up killing five more people.
Ottawa announced Sunday meanwhile that a Canadian soldier was killed and seven injured in a roadside blast in Kandahar province.
And a Dutch soldier was killed, and five comrades wounded, elsewhere in the south when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, the Dutch defence ministry said.
Nearly 200 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.
Southern Afghanistan sees some of the worst of an insurgency launched by the extremist Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001 when they were removed in a US-led invasion.
