KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 8 November 2005 — A suicide bomber tried yesterday to kill the governor of a volatile southern Afghan province by detonating an explosives-filled vehicle as he was going to work, officials said.

A man claiming to be a spokesman for the Taleban movement ousted in 2001 claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the hard-liners, who are waging an insurgency.

The bomb went off as Helmand Governor Sher Mohammad left his vehicle to enter his office in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, his spokesman Mohammad Wali said.

The governor was not hurt while the bomber lost both his arms and both his legs, Wali said. Later in the afternoon, Wali said that the bomber had died in a local hospital. “From his features we can say that he was from Pakistan’s Punjab province.”

He did not say if the man was able to speak before he died. Wali had earlier said intelligence officers were trying to get as much information as possible from the man before he died including his nationality. Interior Ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said the bomber was a foreigner. But purported Taleban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi telephoned AFP and said the attacker was an Afghan from Helmand.

“The suicide attack was carried out by one of our Mujahedeen (holy warriors). His name was Salahuddin and he was 55 years old,” he said from an unknown location. He said the attack was aimed at US military forces based near the governor’s office. Wali said the governor had been due yesterday to meet US-led forces and local security agencies to discuss security in the troubled province. Helmand is one of several southern provinces that sees regular attacks as part of an insurgency being waged mainly by the Taleban and their supporters.

Poetess Beaten to Death

A poetess well-known in literary circles in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat has died after being severely beaten by her husband, who has been arrested, police said yesterday. Nadia Anjuman, 25, died late Friday, said provincial police chief Nisar Ahmad Paikar.

“We have arrested her husband, accused of killing her,” Paikar told AFP. The couple had a six-month-old daughter.

Her husband confessed to the beating but denied that he had killed Anjuman, he said. “She was especially famous among the women poets in Herat,” said a lecturer at Herat University, Ahmad Sayeed Haqiqi.

The editor of the Itfaq-e-Islam daily newspaper, Naqib Arween, said Anjuman had this year published a collection of her poems calls Gul-e-Dodi, which means dark red flower.

The UN condemned the killing. “The death of Nadia Anjuman, as reported, is indeed tragic and a great loss to Afghanistan,” UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said at a media briefing. “It needs to be investigated and anyone found responsible needs to be dealt with in a proper court of law,” Edwards said.