KANDAHAR, Jan 2: A suicide attacker drove a car bomb into a convoy of foreign troops in southern Afghanistan on Monday, wounding a US soldier as well as an Afghan woman and a child, officials said.

The attacker died in the blast in the centre of the southern city of Kandahar, Assadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar province said.

US military spokesman Lieutenant Mike Cody said the American soldier was being treated for “minor injuries”.

Residents said there were also Canadian troops in the convoy.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the bomber was a Taliban guerilla and claimed that five US soldiers had been killed.

The attacks have come amid US plans to cut American troop numbers in Afghanistan to about 16,500 from 19,000 by the spring while NATO, which runs a separate peacekeeping operation in the country, deploys troops in the volatile south.—Reuters