KABUL, June 11: The United Nations said it is “outraged” by an apparent assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai as authorities arrested seven suspects in the case, officials said on Monday.

In the latest violence, a suicide car bomb attack wounded 11 people including three policemen in the east, while four Afghan soldiers were wounded in the south when their car hit a mine.

Tom Koenigs, the top UN official in Afghanistan, said the world body condemned the rocket attack on Sunday in central Ghazni province, which narrowly missed Karzai.

“This is an outrage,” Koenigs told a news conference. “Those who are responsible clearly do not respect the views of the millions of Afghans who elected President Karzai.”

Karzai was giving a speech on Sunday to elders and residents of Andar district in Ghazni province when rockets were fired nearby, said Ali Shah Ahmadzai, the provincial police chief. The rockets missed their target, and no one was hurt.

“After the rockets were fired, we launched a search operation in the area,” Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said on Monday. “We arrested seven people from nearby villages.”

Witnesses said they heard between three and six rockets, but the Taliban claimed it fired 12.

Two of the rockets landed some 200 meters away from the crowd, said Arif Yaqoubi, a local reporter attending the event.

“Please sit down,” Karzai told a nervous crowd under a tent in a school yard. “Don’t be scared. Nothing is happening.”

Karzai finished his speech and his security detail whisked him off by helicopter to Kabul, witnesses and officials said. It was the third attempt on Karzai’s life since he became president following the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi aid that Taliban militants were behind the attack.

“The Taliban knew that Karzai was coming to Andar district. When Karzai was meeting with the people, the Taliban fired 12 rockets,” Ahmadi said by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

In eastern Khost, a suicide car bomber blew himself up on Monday as police were approaching to search his vehicle at a checkpoint in Gurbuz district, said provincial police chief Mohammad Ayub. Eight civilians and three policemen were wounded, one of them critically, he said.

In southern Kandahar province, four Afghan soldiers were wounded when their patrol vehicle hit a mine Sunday, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.—AP