Blast hits foreign convoy in Afghanistan

updated 9:34 a.m. ET Aug. 25, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber attacked a convoy carrying foreigners near the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, a police officer said. Two foreigners and four Afghans were wounded, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The attack occurred on the main road out of Kabul leading to the city of Jalalabad and left one vehicle in flames, said Ali Shah Paktaiwal, chief of criminal investigations in the city.

“The attacker detonated himself near a convoy carrying foreigners,” he said, adding it was not clear whether it was a military or civilian convoy.

Interior Ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary said two foreigners and four Afghans were injured in the attack. He said he did not know the extent of their injuries, nor the nationality of the foreigners.

Insurgent violence in Afghanistan is running at its highest level since U.S. forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers, who had harbored al-Qaida leaders following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Most of the violence is concentrated in southern or eastern Afghanistan, where insurgents planted two roadside bombs Saturday. But there have been occasional suicide attacks on Afghan security forces or western targets in Kabul.

Elsewhere Saturday, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb that killed two Afghans guarding a convoy carrying supplies for NATO-led forces in southern Kandahar province, said provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib.

In neighboring Helmand province, Afghan soldiers shot and killed two suspected Taliban fighters as they attempted to plant a roadside bomb, said police officer Ghulam Wali. The bomb was later defused, he said.

On Friday, insurgents attacked a police patrol in eastern Paktika, sparking a gunbattle that killed six militants and one officer, the Interior Ministry said.

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