KANDAHAR, 17 November 2005 — A suicide car-bomber attacked a military convoy including US troops in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar yesterday, killing three Afghan civilians, witnesses and a senior official said.
The scene of the blast, which struck in the morning rush-hour in the southern city, was cordoned off while the US military denied the coalition convoy had taken a direct hit.
“The car bomb, which killed its driver, detonated on the outskirts of Kandahar against the convoy as it was returning from a nearby forward operating base. There were no US injuries or deaths,” the US military said in a statement.
A civilian flat-bed truck was destroyed, it added.
The Taleban, Afghanistan’s former rulers who are fighting an insurgency against US-led forces that overthrew them, claimed responsibility for the blast in their former stronghold and said they had killed four US soldiers in the suicide attack.
US military spokesman Colonel Jerry O’Hara said he had no information on a report by Kandahar governor Assadullah Khalid that three American soldiers had been slightly injured in the attack.
Kandahar used to be the main bastion of the Taleban until they were deposed by US-led forces in 2001.
Dozens of foreign aid agencies are based in the city, which has been subjected to a series of suicide attacks and Taleban-linked violence in the past two months.
“Three civilians have been killed in this suicide incident,” Khalid said. Four Afghan bystanders were wounded, he added.
US soldiers sealed off the scene of the attack, the latest in a series linked to the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies.
