A suicide car bomb struck a US-led coalition convoy near the Kabul airport Saturday, killing one soldier and five Afghans in the latest in a string of attacks by the extremist Taliban, officials said.
The blast, the third suicide attack in the capital in eight days claimed by Taliban insurgents, set vehicles ablaze and sent plumes of thick, black smoke into the air. The Taliban, driven from power in a US-led invasion that started exactly six years ago, had vowed to step up its deadly attacks during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramazan.
"One coalition soldier was killed," a spokesman for the coalition force, Sergeant Dean Welch, told AFP. He could not release the nationality of the soldier. Most troops serving with the coalition are US nationals. Welch could not say how many soldiers were hurt. An Afghan security official had told AFP earlier that three foreign troops were killed.
Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said five Afghan civilians were killed and five wounded. The coalition said the explosion, caused by a bomb-filled mini-van, was against two of its armoured vehicles.
A wide area around the van, which was reduced to a small chunk of flaming metal, was covered in fragments of metal, broken trees and other debris. Health Minister Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatemi said one Afghan civilian died in hospital from severe wounds and seven others were being treated, including a woman and a schoolgirl aged about seven. The new blast took to 181 the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year, most of them in hostile action.