KANDAHAR, March 27: A suicide attacker, dressed in army uniform, blew himself up outside a provincial police headquarters in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing four policemen, an official said.

In the north, meanwhile, gunmen ambushed and killed a foreign engineer, initially believed to be Pakistani, while five ‘enemy’ were killed trying to ambush World Food Programme trucks in the southeast, police said.

The attacker had tried to enter the office of the police chief in Lashkar Gah, provincial capital of Helmand, on the pretext that he needed a passport, the chief said.

“While being searched at the entrance he detonated his explosives, killing four police and wounding one,” said Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail, who handles passport affairs in Lashkar Gah. The blast was between 20 and 30 metres from his office.

Meanwhile, police said that in the southeastern province of Ghazni, security forces challenged militants who had ambushed 13 trucks of the World Food Programme, setting ablaze one and overturning another.

Five were killed, the interior ministry said in a statement.

The engineer was killed in the province of Balkh by unknown men on a motorbike, provincial police spokesman Shirjan Duranni said. He said the man was a Pakistan national but did not immediately have any other details.—AFP