By DPA
Kabul : A suicide bomber with explosives strapped around his body blew himself up at a marketplace near a convoy of NATO troops in southern Afghanistan Tuesday, killing 17 people, including 12 schoolchildren, and wounding 37, including seven NATO soldiers, officials said.
The human bomb detonated himself near a convoy of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in Deh Rawood district of the southern province of Uruzgan, Mohammad Qasim, the provincial police chief of Uruzgan, told DPA.
"The bomber exploded himself in a crowded market in the centre of Deh Rawood, killing 17 civilians including 12 schoolchildren and wounding another 30 other passers-by," Qasim said, adding that the incident took place when a convoy of Dutch soldiers who serve under ISAF command in the province was passing by the area.
The ISAF issued a statement confirming the attack and said that seven of their soldiers were wounded in the blast.
The alliance statement, however, gave the death toll as six civilians dead and another 13 wounded. It also said that the bomber was driving an explosive-filled vehicle.
ISAF and Coalition soldiers evacuated all the wounded to a military hospital in Tarin Kowt, the provincial capital, the statement said, adding that the more seriously wounded were being transferred to an ISAF medical facility.
"This is an indiscriminate use of a Taliban extremist bomb which has killed and injured both civilians and soldiers," Colonel Mike Smith, ISAF spokesman at Regional Command South, was quoted in the statement as saying.