Market car bomb attack leaves 21 people dead

A suicide bomber in a car blew himself up in a crowded town market in southern Afghanistan today, killing 21 civilians, near where Nato troops were on patrol, officials said.

Thirteen people were also injured in the blast at the market in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province, said provincial government spokesman Dawood Ahmadi.

Some of the victims were children, said Interior Ministry spokesman Yousef Stanezai.

A spokesman for Nato-led Canadian forces in Kandahar, Major Scott Lundy, said Nato troops had a patrol moving through area where the blast happened, but no troops were hurt.

“They were close enough to hear the blast,” he said, adding it was impossible to determine if the convoy was the target.

The attack, one of the deadliest bombings in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, came just days after Nato forces took charge of security in the volatile south from a US-led coalition.

Ahmadi said nine shops were burned in fires caused by the explosion in Panjwayi when the market was busy. He said authorities hadn’t yet established the identity of the suicide bomber.

Last month, Canadian troops were involved in a major offensive in Panjwayi district, regarded as a Taliban stronghold and an area where many farmers cultivate opium.

The hardline Islamic militia has stepped up attacks this year, increasingly using suicide bombings, in a shift of tactics reminiscent of the bloody insurgency in Iraq.

On January 16, a suicide bomber on a motorbike killed 20 people in Spinboldak, a border town in Kandahar province on the border with Pakistan. The bomber had driven into a crowd of about 100 people watching a wrestling match.