KANDAHAR, Aug 3: A suicide car bomber on Thursday killed 21 people while four soldiers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and 10 Taliban died in other violence in Afghanistan.

The interior ministry said a car bomber drove his vehicle into a crowded bazaar in Kandahar. “Twenty-one civilians, including children, were killed and 13 others were injured,” ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai told AFP.

Nato said one of its convoys was a few hundred metres away when the bomb exploded in Panjwayi district but it was not affected.

The International Security Assistance Force convoy had been passing through to recover vehicles involved in two earlier roadside bombings that killed a Canadian soldier and wounded four others, spokesman Maj Quentin Innes said.

“It was a suicide attack carried out by terrorists,” Kandahar government spokesman Daud Ahmadi said. “Its target is not known as there was no government or Nato presence when it took place.”

The bomb blasts were about 10km west in the Pashmul area where a Taliban ambush later killed three Nato troops and wounded six others.

The first bomb hit a patrol securing a major highway at about 4.20am, Isaf said. A Canadian soldier was killed and another wounded.

The second blast hit the same area at around 7.15am and wounded three Canadian troops.

At around 12.30pm another Isaf patrol was ambushed by militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades. Three soldiers were killed and six wounded, Isaf said.

Ten militants were killed late on Wednesday when Nato warplanes helped Afghan security forces raid Taliban hideouts in Helmand’s Garmser district, police said.

Two policemen were wounded, local police chief Mohammad Rasoul Aka said. Provincial police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhil said 22 Taliban were killed or wounded.-—AFP