A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb near a convoy of Canadian troops in Afghanistan today, killing himself and a 10-year-old boy and slightly hurting three Canadian soldiers, officials said.
The attack took place near a base of Canadian troops on the road leading to the airport from the southern city of Kandahar.
The attacker detonated the explosives as he drove past a convoy of three Canadian armoured jeeps carrying about a dozen troops, a spokesman for the Canadian contingent running a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar said.
A ten-year-old boy was killed and older male farmer was seriously wounded in the attack, in which the bomber also died, Captain Francois Giroux said.
One Canadian soldier suffered minor burns and two suffered muscle pains as a result of the blast which slightly damaged one of the Canadian vehicles, he said.
The blast came a day after six Afghan civilians, including a woman and two children, were killed in a bomb blast in the far south of Kandahar province, on the border with Pakistan.
It also came as a top-level NATO mission led by Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was in Afghanistan to discuss alliance plans to expand operations in the restive south and put foreign forces under unified command, despite concerns by some members about the safety of their troops.