By DPA
Kabul : A suicide attack against NATO forces in southern Afghanistan killed eight civilians and wounded 22 others, while another suicide bombing targeting German forces in the northern region killed only the bomber, officials said Thursday.
The bomber in the southern attack, who was driving a vehicle packed with explosives, detonated himself near a convoy of NATO forces in Kandahar city, the capital of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib provincial police chief told DPA.
“The attack killed eight civilians and wounded two policemen and 20 other civilians,” Saqib said, but added that no foreign soldiers were hurt in the attack.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber, who had strapped explosives around his body, detonated himself Wednesday near a convoy of NATO-led German forces in northern Kunduz province, killing himself but causing no casualties among the soldiers or civilians, Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, provincial police chief, told DPA.
Salangi said that the attack took place in Esakhail village in Chardara district of the province, where two weeks before a German military tank was blown up by a roadside mine wounding three soldiers, two of them critically.
He blamed Taliban militants, whose government was toppled in a US-led military invasion more than six years ago, for the Wednesday’s attack.
The Taliban took responsibility for the suicide attack in Kunduz and claimed three German soldiers were killed and three of their military tanks were also destroyed.
“The attack was carried out by our hero Saifullah, in Esakhail village of Chardara district,” Zabiullah Mujahid, Taliban spokesman, told DPA by phone from an undisclosed location.
In Berlin, an army spokesman said the bomb had exploded near a German military patrol in northern Afghanistan, but caused no injuries to the soldiers.
The device went off Wednesday evening between two armoured vehicles, six kilometres north of the troops’ base in Kunduz, the German spokesman said.
Northern provinces of the country are relatively more peaceful than the southern and eastern regions, where Taliban militants are the most entrenched.
More than 140 suicide attacks were carried out by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan in 2007, the record year since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.