September 12, 2008	Friday	Ramazan 11, 1429

KANDAHAR (Afghanistan), Sept 11: Two Taliban-style suicide blasts struck Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least four Afghans and wounding about a dozen more, government officials said.

In one attack, a suicide car bomb tried to ram a convoy of private security guards in the tense southern city of Kandahar, killing two Afghan civilian passers-by, a governor’s spokesman said.

The Taliban insurgent movement, removed from government in a US-led invasion launched after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, claimed responsibility for the attack.

“There was a suicide car bomb attack against one vehicle of a private security company of a construction company in Kandahar city,” provincial government spokesman Zalmai Ayobi told AFP.

“Two civilians were killed and six were wounded,” he said.

A witness said that one of the dead was a boy on his way to school and the other was an adult male.

Ayobi said the attack was against a convoy of Afghan guards from a security company but the targeted vehicle appeared to have driven off.

The bomb blew a crater in the road and parts of the vehicle used in the attack littered the scene, along with bits of the attacker’s flesh.

It was the second attack in the tense city since Sunday when two Taliban suicide bombers blew themselves up inside the police headquarters, killing five people and wounding nearly 40.

A second suicide bomber on Thursday struck the small centre of Khash Rod in Nimroz and killed two more people, governor Ghulam Dastagir told AFP.

The attacker had been on foot and blew up near a police vehicle in front of a mosque, he said.

—AFP