At least 22 people were killed when three suicide bombers blew themselves up in a marketplace in the largest city in southern Afghanistan, authorities have said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said they carried out the attack in Kandahar that injured an estimated 50 civilians.
The explosion occurred about three miles from the main gate of the massive military installation run by the US-led coalition and close to an Afghan military base.
One suicide bomber detonated a three-wheeled motorcycle filled with explosives first, said Rahmatullah Atrafi, deputy police chief in Kandahar province. Then, as people rushed to assist the casualties, two other suicide bombers on foot walked up to the site and blew themselves up, he said.
Eight private security guards were among the 22 killed along a main road on the east side of the city, he said.
Small shops and private security company offices line one side of the road. Large trucks that supply logistics to Kandahar Air Field regularly park along the other side.
Mohammad Naeem, a 30-year-old shopkeeper, said he was selling soft drinks to a customer when the first blast occurred.
“I dropped to the ground,” he said. “When I got up, I looked outside and I heard people shouting for help.”
Mr Naeem said he helped his customer, who was wounded, into his shop.
“He was bleeding. I put cloth on his wound to stop the bleeding,” he said. “I was busy with that when the other blasts occurred.”
Islam Zada, a truck driver, was on the other side of the road having tea near his parked truck when the attack began.
“I couldn’t see anything except for fire and dust,” Mr Zada said of the scene. “I found a wounded truck driver on our side of the road and went to help him. We gave him some water and when we were talking to him the other blasts occurred.”
Meanwhile, Afghan officials and residents claim a pre-dawn Nato airstrike aimed at militants in eastern Afghanistan killed civilians celebrating a wedding, including women and children.
A photographer saw the bodies of five women, seven children and six men piled in the back of vans that villagers drove to the capital of Logar province to protest against the strike on a house in the volatile Baraki Barak district.
The villagers said all of those killed had been at a wedding. Afghan government officials said militants were also among the dead.
Nato said it has no reports of civilians killed in the overnight raid to capture a local Taliban leader.
AP