A suicide bomber struck outside the compound of a southern Afghan provincial governor yesterday, killing 18 people, including several Muslim pilgrims seeking paperwork to travel to Mecca, officials said.
The attacker was stopped by Afghan soldiers at the compound's security gate, where he detonated his explosives vest, said Ghulam Muhiddin, spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor.
The bomber had been walking toward a vehicle of the private military contractors who provide security for the governor, said Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a NATO spokesman.
Nine Afghan soldiers and nine civilians were killed, said Rahmatullah Mohammdi, director of the hospital in Lashkar Gah. Seventeen people were wounded, he said.
The governor, Mohammed Daoud Safi, was inside the compound and was not injured in the attack.
Among the civilians waiting outside the compound were Afghan pilgrims seeking permission to travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Muhiddin said. The main mosque in Lashkar Gah sits across from the compound.
Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who claims to be a spokesman for Taliban affairs in southern Afghanistan, contacted the Associated Press and said the militant group was responsible for the attack. Ahmadi's exact ties to the militants are not known.
Militants have stepped up attacks in southern Afghanistan in recent months, including the use of roadside and suicide bombs. Twenty-one people died in Lashkar Gah last month when a suicide bomber tried to kill an ex-police chief, and last week militants killed 19 construction workers riding on a bus in neighboring Kandahar province.
Meanwhile, a bomb attack against a NATO patrol just south of the Afghan capital killed an Italian soldier and a child, officials said.
A remote-control bomb planted under a bridge detonated when a three-vehicle military convoy passed by, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, Kabul police criminal director.
One Italian soldier was killed and five were wounded, the Italian Defense Ministry said in Rome.
A child riding in a car behind the NATO convoy was killed, NATO said. Four other civilians in the car were wounded.
Two people were detained for questioning in the blast, which went off about 10km south of Kabul, police said.
The bloodied body of the slain soldier, with his bulletproof vest still on, lay on the ground alongside his weapon shortly after the blast, according to an AP reporter at the scene.
Six Italian troops carried the victim's body to a military helicopter that landed near the blast site.
Other helicopters hovered overhead as police and Italian troops cordoned off the area.
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