KABUL, Sept 14: Six children were killed in a bomb explosion in Afghanistan on Sunday while a suicide attacker blew up a marked United Nations vehicle and killed two Afghan doctors and a driver, officials said.

The bloodshed comes amid growing concern over deteriorating security, seven years after a US-led invasion ended the Taliban regime, with top-level talks on rising extremist attacks due in London and Washington in the coming days.

The children were killed when a bomb they were playing with exploded in a village in the central province of Ghazni, Andar district governor Abdul Rahim Daisiwal told AFP.

Around a dozen more children were wounded in the blast and some are in a critical condition, he said.

Some of the wounded children had been transferred to an international military base for treatment, the Nato-led force headquarters in Kabul said.

The Taliban denied involvement in the bomb blast.

But they did claim responsibility for a suicide car bombing that ripped through the southeastern town of Spin Boldak, hitting a vehicle of UN staff on a mission to monitor efforts to vaccinate children against polio.

Afghan doctors Mamoon Tahiri and Shamsulhaque Kakar were killed outright in the explosion, the Afghan health ministry said in a statement. A driver died in hospital from his injuries, it said.

The doctors were under contract to the World Health Organisation’s polio campaign, the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said.

Afghan officials said between 15 and 18 other people, most of them civilians, were wounded in the blast which struck a UN-marked car as it drove through a market in Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border.

“This attack was on innocent civilians working only for the people of Afghanistan, and is beyond comprehension,” Eide said.

Health Minister Amin Fatimie condemned the “very horrible incident” in a statement that called on parties in the Afghan conflict to respect the impartiality of health workers.

Afghans receive healthcare without discrimination but health ministry “staff and clinics are targeted by opposition,” Fatimie said in a statement.

“Doctors are kidnapped and killed. This time, unfortunately, suicide attack has taken lives of two doctors and one driver.”

Separately, three policemen wounded in a Taliban attack on a district centre on Saturday died, taking the toll from the incident to seven, Ghazni province deputy police chief Mohammad Zaman said.

Another two policemen were missing, he said.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said his group was holding the men and was “deciding on their fate.”

In another incident, an Afghan interpreter working for the US military was shot dead as he stepped out of his home on Sunday, police said.

President Hamid Karzai is due to meet US President George W. Bush in Washington on Sept 26 for talks, the White House announced this week.

President Asif Ali Zardari is to discuss the conflict with the Taliban on Pakistani side of the border with British leaders in the coming days.—AFP