KABUL, June 28: A series of overnight explosions in a munitions depot in the southern Afghan border town of Spin Boldak killed 32 people and injured 70, an aid worker said on Friday, as local Afghan officials denied there were any deaths.

“A new figure gives 32 dead and 70 injured, according to local authorities in Spin Boldak,” an employee of a foreign aid organization said.

However officials in the main southern city of Kandahar, some 100kms to the north-west, said no-one had died.

“According to our reports nobody has been killed. There were three people buried under the rubble whom we recovered alive,” spokesman for Kandahar provincial governor Gul Agha, Khaled Pashtoon, told AFP by phone.

“We’re investigating to find out the cause of the explosion. We don’t know if it was deliberate or accidental,” Pashtoon said.

A blast around midnight tore through a local military munitions depot, triggering a succession of secondary blasts over several hours, the World Food Programme spokesman in Kabul, Alejandro Chicheri, said.

The blasts also destroyed WFP and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees offices, Chicheri said.

One WFP worker was slightly injured in the blast and a key WFP warehouse storing desperately-needed food supplies for refugees was damaged, said WFP spokesman in Pakistan Khaled Mansour.

PANIC: Witnesses said panic gripped the town of Spin Boldak after the blast that sent missiles flying in several directions, agency adds from Chaman.