KANDAHAR, March 30: Militants killed a district chief and three of his staff in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, officials said. Dawlat Shah district chief Qadeer Khan and three of his staff were killed by militants firing rockets and rifles at their car as Qadeer Khan drove home, said Laghman province’s deputy governor Habib Rasool Memawal.

Separately, a suicide car bomber killed himself and wounded six people in a botched attack on a US-led coalition convoy in Kandahar city, police said.

The suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden Toyota vehicle near two armoured vehicles in a convoy of Romanian and Canadian soldiers. A coalition soldier and four bystanders were wounded in the ensuing blast, a coalition spokesman said.

The attacker had not been able to fully strike the convoy as his car detonated prematurely when it was clipped by an overtaking taxi, district police chief Colonel Shir Shah told AFP.

A purported spokesman for Taliban, Yousuf Ahmadi, said the movement had carried out the attack.—Agencies