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Blast kills two workers in Afghan office

A bomb blew up a small electricity department building in southern Afghanistan's troubled Helmand province yesterday, killing two people and wounding eight, police said.

The insurgent Taliban movement said it had planted the bomb in the Gereshk district in an attempt to kill the district police chief, Razak Khan, who regularly held meetings there.

Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said that Khan was among the wounded in the blast but officials could not immediately confirm he had even been there.

The attackers had somehow been able to pass through security outside the building to plant the bomb, said General Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, Helmand province police commander.

"How it happened, we don't know but some explosives were planted inside the building which caused the explosion," he said.

"As a result of the explosion, two employees of the department have been killed, six other employees and two civilians have been wounded," he said.

The one-story building, made of traditional mudbrick, collapsed after the blast, causing scores of people to flock to the site.

The building, about 200m from a small hydropower plant, was where people came to pay their electricity bills or contact officials about their power supply.

The Taliban, which frequently carries out bombings as part of its insurgency, is most active in Helmand, Afghanistan's largest province and also the producer of most of its huge illegal opium crop.

The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were ousted for harboring al-Qaeda leaders.

The militants target Afghan and international forces as well as government officials and institutions.

The insurgency was at its deadliest last year with more than 8,000 people killed, according to figures used by the UN. This included about 1,500 civilians, although most of the dead were rebel fighters.
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