Suicide blast in Afghan bazaar kills 17

Witnesses in the Helmand province town of Lashkar Gah told AFP a man with bombs strapped to his body had grabbed hold of a prominent businessman who was also a former police chief and detonated the explosives.

The businessman, Khan Mohammad, was among those killed, they said.

"A suicide bomber detonated inside a crowded market in Lashkar Gah," Helmand government spokesman Haji Muhaidin Khan told AFP.

"As a result 17 people were martyred, 47 were wounded. Fifteen among the wounded are kids," he said.

Khan blamed the attack on the "enemies of Afghanistan", a term Afghan officials usually use to refer to fighters with the extremist Taliban movement that is waging an insurgency that sees regular suicide bombings.

Khan Mohammad was the Helmand police of chief during communist rule in the 1980s.

"He had no personal feud with anyone and he was not a political figure now. He was just busy in his business, but the enemies of Afghanistan killed him," the government spokesman said.

The Nato-led force that commands international troops in southern Afghanistan, which has a base in Lashkar Gah, confirmed there was a blast but had no details.

In Herat, Taliban fighters attacked a police post in western Afghanistan, killing two policemen and three civilians and abducting another four people, police said Monday.

The insurgents drove up to the post in a town in Farah province in six pick-up trucks on Sunday and attacked, provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib told AFP.

The attackers killed two police officers, two shopkeepers and a customs office employee, he said. Rebels also took away four civilians, two of them customs workers, Saqib said.

The attack was in the province's Jawand district on the border with troubled Helmand province -- an area hard hit by a wave of violence by remnants of the Taliban regime toppled in late 2001 as well as opium runners.

The district also shares a long border with Afghanistan's western neighbour Iran.

The police chief could not say how many Taliban casualties there were in the clash.