Three suicide bombers detonated at the gates of a government compound in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing five policemen, an official said.
The bombers struck at the governor’s compound in the city of Kandahar, said Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of the provincial council and a brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“There were three explosions. One of the suicide bombers exploded on the outer side of the gate and two others on the inner side of the gate,” he said.
“Five policemen have been martyred and three others injured. No senior official was hurt,” Ahmad Wali Karzai said.
An interior ministry spokesman in the capital Kabul earlier confirmed three explosions, with at least two carried out by suicide bombers, and put the initial death toll at three policemen with another three wounded.
“The first bomber set off his bombs while he was being searched by police at the gate of the compound, which houses the provincial governor and other provincial government officials,” said the spokesman, Zemarai Bashary.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Kandahar is a notorious flashpoint in an escalating Taliban insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government nearly eight years after the US-led invasion.
Mohammad Akbar, an Afghan soldier and ambulance driver whose hands and uniform were soaked in blood, said that he helped evacuate the injured.
“I evacuated up to 10 injured to hospital and saw some bodies but I did not touch or count them,” he said at the scene.
Canadian troops and Afghan security forces sealed off the area, where a burqa-clad woman sobbed as ambulances raced through town, an Agence France-Presse reporter said.
Yesterday’s attack came just over three weeks after four suicide attackers stormed a provincial council compound in the same city and killed 13 people, including senior government officials, in an assault claimed by the Taliban.
Separately, a spokesman for the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said yesterday that an air strike killed at least six suspected insurgents in the central province of Wardak during ground clashes with militants.
“We can confirm there was an incident in Wardak involving an air strike. There were no civilian casualties. We can confirm between six and eight insurgents were killed,” the spokesman said.
An international soldier was also wounded during the operation, he said.
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