A suicide bomber tried on Monday to kill the governor of a volatile southern Afghan province by detonating an explosives-filled vehicle as he was going to work, officials said.
A man claiming to be a spokesperson for the Taliban movement ousted in 2001 claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the hardliners, who are waging an insurgency.
The bomb went off as Helmand governor Sher Mohammad left his vehicle to enter his office in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, his spokesperson Mohammad Wali said.
The governor was not hurt while the bomber lost both his arms and both his legs, Wali said.
Later in the afternoon, Wali said that the bomber had died in a local hospital. “From his features we can say that he was from Pakistan’s Panjab province.”
He did not say if the man was able to speak before he died.
Wali had earlier said intelligence officers were trying to get as much information as possible from the man before he died including his nationality.
Interior ministry spokesperson Yousuf Stanizai said the bomber was a foreigner.
But purported Taliban spokesperson Yousuf Ahmadi telephoned Agence France Presse and said the attacker was an Afghan from Helmand.
“The suicide attack was carried out by one of our mujahedin [holy warriors]. His name was Salahuddin and he was 55 years old,” he said from an unknown location.
He said the attack was aimed at United States military forces based near the governor’s office.
Wali said the governor had been due on Monday to meet US-led forces and local security agencies to discuss security in the troubled province.
Helmand is one of several southern provinces that sees regular attacks as part of an insurgency being waged mainly by the Taliban and their supporters.
It is also home to several drug barons who have private armies. The province produces the bulk of Afghanistan’s opium, which makes most of the world’s heroin.
Monday’s attack was the second claimed by the Taliban since the three-day Eid al-Fitr festival, the most important event on the Muslim calendar, ended on Saturday.
The Taliban also said they had killed a policeman at the weekend in an attack on a police post in Ghazni province.
The militants’ fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, used Eid to call on Afghans to join his fighters in a jihad, or holy war, against the “invader Americans” — the US forces who have been in the country since they helped to topple the Taliban.
His statement also said “victory is close.”
A US-led coalition of about 20 000 foreign troops, most of them Americans, is based in Afghanistan to help root out insurgents who focus their attacks in the east and south.
The coalition helped Afghan militiamen remove the Taliban after they failed to hand over Osama bin Laden for the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks on New York and Washington.
This year has been the worst for insurgency-linked violence since the fall of the Taliban, with about 1 400 people killed — most of them suspected militants. – AFP