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Suicide bomber kills 37 in southern Afghanistan

A suicide car bomber targeting a Canadian military convoy detonated his explosives at a busy market in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing 37 civilians, officials said.

At least 30 were wounded in the attack in Spin Boldak, a town in Kandahar Province near the border with Pakistan, Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.

Three Canadian soldiers were slightly wounded, Governor Asadullah Khalid said.

The attack comes one day after Afghanistan's deadliest bombing since the 2001 US-led invasion. More than 100 people were killed on Sunday by a suicide bomber outside Kandahar City, Khalid said yesterday, raising the original death toll of 80.

The back-to-back bombings made the two-day period the deadliest for Afghan civilians since the Taliban's ouster.

The attacks could also serve as a warning that insurgents have changed tactics. Although militant attacks occasionally have killed dozens of civilians, insurgents have generally sought to avoid targeting ordinary Afghans.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for yesterday's attack.

Spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the bombing was carried out by an Abdul Rahman from Kandahar. Asked about the large number of civilians killed, Ahmadi said that 10 foreign soldiers and "a large number of police" were killed -- officials gave no indication that this was true.

Just over the border from Spin Boldak, in a hospital in Chaman, Pakistan, Abdul Hakim lay in a hospital bed, his clothes splattered with blood. Although the Afghan-Pakistan border was closed yesterday because of a poll in Pakistan, several of the wounded were taken to Chaman for treatment.

"A white Toyota Corolla car rammed the second vehicle in the [military] convoy as it passed through the bazaar," said Hakim, who witnessed the attack from his grocery store. "Then there was a huge explosion. It was dust. I do not know what happened to me."

Squadron Leader Peter Darling, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force in southern Afghanistan, said no NATO troops were killed in the attack.

"We strongly condemn this cowardly attack on the civilian population, who were attacked by insurgents during the course of their daily business," Darling said.
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