KANDAHAR, Dec 7:A suicide car bomb targeting a Nato convoy in Afghanistan killed two civilians on Thursday, while elsewhere a district chief and a senior policemen were killed by Taliban gunmen.

The bomber struck as Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) military vehicles drove through the southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and scene of a rash of recent suicide attacks.

ISAF headquarters in Kabul confirmed there had been an attack against its troops, but said there had been no military casualties.

Two bodies and seven injured men were taken to the Mirwais hospital in restive Kandahar after the blast, Doctor Najibullah, who gave only one name, told AFP.

The interior ministry in Kabul confirmed there had been a suicide bombing but said only one civilian had been killed, while putting the number of injured people at 11.

Pieces of the bomber's body were scattered around the blast site in the Chawk Madat area of the city, which was sealed off by Afghan security forces, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

Police were also trying to dismantle an unexploded hand grenade, which they said was left over from the car bomb, the reporter said.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bombing was the third suicide attack in Kandahar in as many days and the 10th since November 25 across Afghanistan.

Two US citizens working for a private security company and five Afghans died in a suicide attack in Kandahar on Wednesday, while two Canadian soldiers were killed in a similar car bomb in the city on November 27.

Separately, suspected Taliban militants shot dead Abdul Zahir, chief of Gulran district in western Herat province, as he drove to the provincial capital on Wednesday, the interior ministry said.

One of his bodyguards was wounded, ministry spokesman Dad Mohammed Rasa said, adding that it was not clear whether the attackers were in vehicles or lying in wait at the roadside.

“The enemies of Afghanistan carried out this attack,” Rasa told AFP, using the Afghan government's usual description for the ousted Taliban movement and its Islamist allies.

Also on Wednesday, armed men tried to kill Mohammad Mubeen, the chief of the restive Barmal district in eastern Paktika province bordering Pakistan, but the official escaped unharmed.

The attackers fled after Mubeen's bodyguards returned fire for several minutes, provincial governor Mohammad Akram Khpolwak said, also blaming the attacks on the Taliban.

Taliban insurgents shot dead a police investigations official on the same day at his home in the Zazi Maidan district of neighbouring Khost province, provincial police chief Abdul Hanan Raufi said.

Meanwhile, the regional chief of the Abn-i-Sina non-governmental organization and his driver were kidnapped by unidentified armed men in Khost's Zurmat district, again on Wednesday, Raufi said.

The men were visiting a hospital that the aid group runs in the area.—AFP