AFGHANISTAN: A suicide car bomber driving a taxi killed himself and two Afghans yesterday in what appeared to have been an attack on international forces in the capital, Kabul.
No foreign troops were hurt, a spokesman for a Nato peacekeeping force said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the latest attack in a wave of the worst violence the country has seen in years. The blast was on a main road in the east of the city, where foreign forces have bases.
"A suicide bomber, the driver of another vehicle and a passerby have been killed," an interior ministry official said.
More than 100 people - most of them militants but also including many Afghan police, four foreign soldiers and an American civilian - have been killed since Wednesday. Most of the violence has been in the south.
A Nato spokesman said eight Afghans had been wounded and two were being treated in a Nato hospital. "There was a military convoy in the area and that would appear to have been the target," said Maj Toby Jackman.
No troops in the convoy were hurt. Maj Jackman declined to say what country they came from.
The blast destroyed the bomber's taxi and badly damaged a small truck. Shops next to the road were set ablaze and black smoke billowed into the air.
Meanwhile, the Afghan foreign minister said yesterday that Taliban leaders were living in Pakistan and organising attacks from bases there. Pakistan and Afghanistan are major US allies in the war on terror and both are battling militants along their common border. But relations have been strained over Afghan accusations that the Taliban are getting help on the Pakistani side.
"We know that the ideological leadership and also political leadership or military leadership of the Taliban and also other international terrorist groups . . . are living in Pakistan," foreign minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told a news conference.
Asked if militant attacks against Afghan and US-led troops were orchestrated in Pakistan, he said: "Exactly, that is the case."
Southern Afghanistan has recently seen some of the fiercest fighting since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001. Despite Pakistan's denials the Taliban are getting help on its side of the border, there is no doubt among military and government officials in Afghanistan the insurgents are bringing in supplies and recruits.
A senior US security official said this month that Pakistan was not doing enough to help root out Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders who have found safe haven in its lawless tribal lands along the Afghan border.
Pakistan nurtured the Taliban when they emerged in the Afghan south in the early 1990s and was their main backer when they were in power. Pakistan officially cut its support after the September 11th attacks. Most Taliban are ethnic Pashtun and have supporters among Pakistani Pashtuns and Pakistani religious parties, some of which control parts of the border.
Mr Spanta, who became foreign minister last month, said he would travel to Pakistan and ask Islamabad to "decisively" campaign against the militants. He said Afghanistan wanted friendship with Pakistan and that was only possible with mutual respect and security.
Pakistan is suspicious of the close ties between its old rival, India, and Afghanistan. Pakistan has accused India of meddling in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, on the Afghan border, where autonomy-seeking rebels are waging an insurgency.
Mr Spanta said both Afghanistan and India were victims of terrorism and organised crime and needed close relations. But he said Pakistan need not be alarmed by the close ties between New Delhi and Kabul.