KABUL — A Taliban-style explosion Saturday in a volatile city in southern Afghanistan at the heart of the insurgency killed one civilian and injured four others, officials said.
Explosives packed on to a motorcycle were detonated by remote control in the centre of Kandahar, a spokesman for the local governor said.
"There was a blast in front of a school close to Kandahar police headquarters," according to Zalmai Ayoubi.
"It was caused by a remotely-detonated motorcycle bomb which killed one civilian and wounded four civilians," he said.
An AFP reporter in Kandahar said the explosion took place shortly before 8:00 pm (1530 GMT).
Abdul Raheem, a doctor at Kandahar hospital said: "So far we have received one civilian dead and four civilians injured at our hospital."
Kandahar, capital of the province of the same name, is at the centre of the war waged by the Taliban since its own brutal regime was toppled in a US-led invasion in October 2001.
It was the capital of the Taliban administration and remains the heartland of the Islamist movement which is fighting the democratic government of President Hamid Karzai.
The United States and NATO have more than 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, including an additional 30,000 American forces having recently completed deployment as part of a counter-insurgency surge aimed at speeding an end to the war.
Many of the extra troops are based in Kandahar and its surrounding areas aiming to flush out the insurgents in an operation seen as key to the strategy led by US General David Petraeus.
Taliban tactics -- which largely rely on suicide bombers and remote-controlled bombs known as improvised explosive devices (IEDS) -- have killed almost 600 foreign soldiers this year, compared to 521 in 2009.
The United Nations has said that more than 1,000 civilians died as a result of the violence in the first half of this year, mostly deaths caused by the insurgents.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. (google.com/hosted news)
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