KABUL/WASHINGTON: The chief of the CIA’s base in the Khost province of Afghanistan was among those killed by a suicide bomber along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.

Seven CIA employees were killed and six others were injured Wednesday when a suicide bomber struck inside Camp Chapman, a CIA post near Khost.

Former CIA officials say the Khost chief was the mother of three. As base chief she would have directed and coordinated CIA operations and intelligence gathering in the province, a hotbed of Taleban and insurgent activity because of its proximity to Pakistan’s tribal region.

The Taleban militia claimed responsibility Thursday for the bombings that killed 14 people, including the seven CIA employees and an Afghan in a suicide attack at the CIA base, and five Canadians in the south.

It was unclear how the bomber at US Forward Operating Base Chapman at the edge of Khost city was able to circumvent security. Khost is the capital of Khost province and is a Taleban stronghold.

Taleban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that an Afghan National Army officer wearing a suicide vest entered the base and blew himself up inside the gym. A US official who was briefed on Wednesday’s blast also said it took place in the gym.

Forward Operating Base Chapman used to be a military base, but was later turned into a CIA base, according to a US official. Some military men and women work there on a Provincial Reconstruction Team, one of several joint civilian-military units that secure and develop areas of Afghanistan. A NATO spokesman said “other personnel” operate from Chapman as well, but he said he could not elaborate.

Harold E. Brown Jr., a State Department employee of Fairfax, Va., died in the attack, his father, Harold E. Brown Sr., told The Associated Press on Thursday. The younger Brown, 37, who grew up in Bolton, Mass., served in the army and remained a major in the reserves. He is survived by a wife and three children ages 12, 10 and 2.

Separately, four Canadian soldiers and a journalist embedded in their unit were killed the same day by a roadside bomb in the southern Kandahar province, the bloodiest single incident suffered by the Canadian military in 2009.

Michelle Lang, a 34-year-old health reporter with the Calgary Herald, was the first Canadian journalist to die in Afghanistan. She arrived in the country just two weeks ago.