January 27, 2007	Saturday	Muharram 07, 1428

KANDAHAR, Jan 26: A suicide bomber blew himself up on Friday outside a US-funded aid office in Afghanistan while the Nato-led force said it may have killed a senior Taliban leader in an airstrike.

Separately, police said 10 Taliban rebels and a policeman died in a battle near the border with Pakistan.

Police in Lashkar Gah, the capital of insurgency-hit Helmand province, were following the suicide attacker after a tip-off and asked him to surrender, provincial police chief General Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail said.

“The police called on him to stop and shot him after he refused. He detonated explosives strapped to his body after being wounded,” Mullahkhail said.

The blast happened close to the offices of the Alternative Livelihoods Programme, a non-governmental organisation funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), officials said.

One of the policemen who confronted the bomber was wounded in the incident “but we luckily managed to prevent him from his evil attempts,” the police chief said.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call from an unknown location.

“Eight American soldiers were killed or wounded in the suicide blast today,” he said. Many previous Taliban claims have proved exaggerated.

The Nato-led force in Afghanistan meanwhile said it destroyed a “known insurgent command post” also in Helmand, in an airstrike on Thursday that it believed killed a senior Taliban leader and his deputies.

“The precision-guided munitions impacted on target, completely destroying the compound but causing no damage to the surrounding area.

“A senior Taliban leader and his deputies are believed to have been killed in this strike,” ISAF said in a statement.

In another incident early Friday, 10 Taliban militants and a police officer were killed in a five-hour gun battle after guerrillas attacked a border post in southeastern Paktika province, the provincial governor said.

Fifteen Taliban and five police were wounded in the incident in the Gomal district bordering Pakistan, governor Mohammad Akram Khepelwak said.-—AFP