Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Afghanistan Blast Strikes Center of Kandahar

Tuesday, August 25, 2009
21:09 Mecca time, 18:09 GMT

Blast strikes centre of Kandahar

Some people were said to be trapped under rubble after the blast

A large car bomb has been detonated in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar killing at least 35 people.

Police said it was a suicide attack near a wedding hall in a residential area of the city.

James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said that two local hospitals had told them the toll had risen to 35 with 90 people injured.

All the dead are civilians and among them are many women and children.

"The wedding hall has been destroyed. This may have been a truck bomb. It sounds like a very large explosion," Bays reported.

The bomb, believed to have been in a Mazda vehicle, went off shortly after dusk fell and people were breaking their Ramadan fast.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, a representative of Kandahar Provincial Council, told Al Jazeera: "There are still some people trapped. We have people trying to get them out of the rubble."

No group has claimed carrying out the attack.

Nato deaths

Earlier in the day, four US soldiers operating with Nato were killed in a bomb blast in the south of the country.

The US military said the soldiers had been killed by an improvised explosives device.

The International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) did not give the location of the attack.

The deaths make August the second most deadly month for US troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

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