The attacker struck as the official, Abdul Latif Ashna, was being driven to work in the provincial capital, said a ministry spokesman, Zemeri Bashary.

The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack. In a text message to reporters, Taleban spokesman Qari Yousef said the suicide bomber killed the deputy governor as well as three of his body guards and his driver.

US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, who was traveling in Kandahar, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the assassination. “The enemies of Afghanistan cannot stop the Afghan people from development and progress by killing such personalities,” Karzai said in a statement. “There are thousands of other brave Afghans who will stand against the enemy and serve the people.”

Also on Saturday, Karzai expressed his sadness over the deaths of six members of a prominent Afghan family who were killed when a Taleban suicide bomber blew himself up Friday at Kabul supermarket frequented by affluent Afghans and foreigners.

In a statement, Karzai said Dr. Massoud Yama, a young doctor at a military hospital, his wife, Hamida Barmaki, a political science professor at Kabul University, and their four children died in the attack. She was an activist and served on the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Yama’s mother and Barmaki’s mother-in-law is former Afghan senator Maboba Hoqiqmal, who currently is Karzai’s legal affairs adviser. Afghan police officials said initially that two or three foreigners were among eight people killed in the bombing.

However, the Kabul Police Department released a statement Saturday evening saying that no foreigners died in the incident. So far, no foreign embassy has confirmed the death of any foreign victims.

Mohammad Zahir, the chief of criminal investigation for the Kabul police, said one man, one boy and six females — all Afghan — died in the blast. Fifteen other people were injured in the explosion — 10 Afghans and five foreigners, he said.

The Taleban said their target was an official with the US-based Xe security contractor, formerly known as Blackwater. A representative for USTC Holdings, which recently bought the North Carolina-based Xe, said no one associated with the company was killed or wounded in the bombing.

A senior international intelligence official in Kabul said Saturday that the Taleban’s Haqqani network, which has ties to Al-Qaeda, carried out the attack, but that there was no intelligence to suggest that the security contractor was being targeted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the information.