Tanker bomb hits Afghan government office, killing 6
Rahmatullah Raufi, the governor of Kandahar province where the attack took place, blamed Taliban militants for the violence.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber driving an oil tanker detonated his explosives next to an Afghan government office during a provincial council meeting today, killing at least six people and wounding 42, officials said.
The attack in the southern city of Kandahar ripped through the council office, flattened five nearby homes and damaged the nearby offices of the country's intelligence service.
The bomb dug a crater some 15 feet deep into the ground, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.
Rahmatullah Raufi, the governor of Kandahar province, said that among the dead were two intelligence agents, one police officer and three civilians. Raufi blamed Taliban militants for the attack.
"The Taliban want to disrupt law and order in Kandahar," Raufi said.
The blast in Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold, came as the provincial council was hearing constituent complaints. Two members of the provincial council were wounded in the attack, Raufi said.
Afghan police, soldiers and intelligence agents were at the site, as were Canadian soldiers.
Only hours earlier in Kandahar, two men on a motorbike threw acid on eight Afghan girls walking to school Wednesday, hospitalizing three of the girls with serious burns, said Dr. Sharifa Siddiqi. Three others were treated and released. Two of the girls who wore full-length burqas were not harmed.
Some of the girls wore a typical Afghan school uniform -- black pants, a white shirt, black coat and white headscarf.
Atifa Bibi, 14, said from her hospital bed that two men rode up to the girls while they were walking to school and threw the acid. Bibi had burns on her face, which was covered in medical cream.
Afghanistan's government condemned the attack, saying it was "un-Islamic" and perpetrated by the "country's enemies," a usual reference to Taliban militants.
"By such actions, they cannot prevent 6 million children going to school," the government said in a statement.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the acid attack, and Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied the insurgents were involved.
Bibi's aunt, Bibi Meryam, said the family had not received any threats not to send their girls to school, but now they would consider keeping the girls at home until security stabilized.
Girls were banned from schools under the Taliban's hard-line Islamist regime, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Women also were not allowed to leave the house without a male family member escorting them.
