KANDAHAR: A suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up near two police vehicles in a border town in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing six people and wounding 17, police said.
The evening rush hour blast in Spin Boldak was the latest in a series of attacks on police there by the extremist Taliban who have been waging an insurgency for nearly seven years.It came on the same day Afghanistan`s most high-profile policewoman, Malalai Joya, was shot dead as she was driven to work, an assassination also claimed by the Taliban.
The bomber blew himself up near two police vehicles on patrol, Kandahar province police chief Matiullah Khan told AFP.Three policemen were killed and five wounded, he said. Three civilians were killed and 12 were wounded. The blast occurred in a wide road and caused little damage to surrounding buildings.
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, confirmed that his militia was involved. Police officers are among the Taliban`s main targets in an insurgency sweeping Afghanis-tan.Around 750 have been killed in the past six months, according to the interior ministry. Spin Boldak has seen several Taliban attacks this month. Last week a remote-controlled bomb killed two border policemen; days earlier a roadside bomb killed a district governor and his police chief in the same area. On September 14, a suicide car bomb in the town killed two Afghan doctors and a driver working for the United Nations on a polio eradication campaign.
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