Motorbike bomber kills 20 spectators at wrestling match

A MAN on a motorbike drove up to a crowd watching a wrestling match in an Afghan border town yesterday and detonated a bomb killing 20 people and wounding at least 30 others — the deadliest in a recent spate of attacks.

The attack came hours after a bomb hit a convoy of Afghan army trucks loaded with troops in the southern city of Kandahar, killing four and wounding 16.

The man on the motorbike detonated explosives strapped to his body near a crowd of about 100 people watching a wrestling match at a fair in Spinboldak, a key crossing point into southern Pakistan, said Kandahar provincial governor Asadullah Khalid.

He said that 20 people were killed, as well as the attacker, and more than 20 were wounded, at least five seriously.

It was third bombing in Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold, in the past two days, and the bloodiest in a series of 25 suicide attacks in the country in the past four months.

Gen Mohammed Zahir Azimi said the attack on the Afghan army convoy was a suicide car bombing. However, the army commander in Kandahar, Maj Gen Rehmatullah Raufi, said that it was a roadside bomb.

On Sunday, a suicide car bomb in Kandahar killed a senior Canadian diplomat and two Afghan civilians and wounded three Canadian troops, part of a new NATO-led deployment.

Also yesterday, US military spokesman Col James Yonts said US-led coalition and Afghan forces had killed five suspected militants late Friday in eastern Khost province. He did not give further details.