KANDAHAR, Sept 25: Nearly 40 people, including a Canadian soldier and an Afghan police commander, were killed in a new wave of violence across Afghanistan, officials said on Tuesday.

In one attack, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up in the south-eastern border town of Spin Boldak on Tuesday evening, killing five policemen and wounding three more, a police commander said.

The attack appeared aimed at the town’s police commander, Abdur Razak, who said: “I am OK but my five police guards were killed.” There have been more than 100 suicide bombings in Afghanistan this year, most claimed by the Taliban, with the last in the capital Kabul four days ago that killed a French soldier.

The Canadian military reported meanwhile that one of its soldiers was killed in a mortar attack while repairing a tank in the southern province of Kandahar.

One other soldier was wounded in the blast on Monday while three more soldiers were hurt in a subsequent firefight with insurgents when they tried to come to their aid, Brigadier-General Guy Laroche told reporters in Kandahar.

The trooper became the third foreign soldier to die that day after two Spanish soldiers died in a bomb blast in southw-estern Farah province.—AFP