Suicide blast near NATO base, Afghan killed

KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – A suicide bomber blew up an explosives-filled vehicle near a NATO base in eastern Afghanistan Monday, killing an Afghan teenager and wounding several civilians, officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the town of Khost about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border with Pakistan, the officials said.

"In the car bomb blast, a woman and six other civilians were wounded and one civilian was killed," Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

The body of a 15-year-old boy was taken to a hospital in the town, said doctor Abdul Majeed.

First reports were that no members of NATO's International Security Assistance Force were hurt in the blast, said an ISAF spokeswoman for the east region, Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green.

However, five Afghan children, a woman and a man were hurt, she said.

The blast appeared to have been aimed at an ISAF base near Camp Salerno, the biggest US military base in eastern Afghanistan.

Bashary said there were two suicide bombers in the vehicle. One left the car before the bomb exploded and had apparently intended to cause a second explosion among the crowd that gathered after the first.

He was instead was wounded in the car bomb blast and fell to the ground, where he later blew himself up, causing no further casualties.

Earlier Monday a roadside bomb was remotely detonated in Khost as a police vehicle passed, provincial police chief Abdul Qayoom Bakizoy told AFP. A policeman and a civilian were hurt, he said.

Khost has seen regular attacks over the past months, including one on December 28 near a government office that left 14 children and two Afghan adults dead.

Suicide bombs are a main feature of an extremist insurgency being led by the Taliban, who were in government from 1996 to 2001.

The hardline Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb outside the German embassy in Kabul Saturday that killed four Afghan civilians and a US soldier.