Feb 27, 2007, 9:23 GMT
Kabul - A suicide car bomb blew up Tuesday outside a US military base near Kabul during a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney, killing more than 15 people but not harming the vice president, officials said.
Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said a suicide car bomber set off the explosion at the gate of the primary US military base in Afghanistan.
More than 15 people were killed, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry said, without elaborating on how many foreigners or Afghans were among the casualties.
The Taliban, Afghanistan's ousted fundamentalist Islamic rulers, was responsible for the attack, a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousef Ahmadi, told dpa by phone from an undisclosed location.
The attack occurred while Cheney was inside the base about 50 kilometres north of Kabul, but he was not hurt, US military spokesman Master Sergeant Richard Simonsen told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
'It did not impact on the vice president,' he said.
There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties. The ISAF said in a statement that initial reports indicated four people were killed, including the suicide bomber, and 23 were wounded.
Ahmadi claimed a higher death toll, saying more than 20 people were killed and 30 were injured, the majority of them US soldiers.
He said the attack was carried out by an Afghan national named Abdul Rahim from Logar province.
'The extremists' vision for Afghanistan is simply one of murder and mayhem,' Collins said in a statement.
Hours prior to the attack about 10 a.m. (0530 GMT), Cheney met with US soldiers stationed at the base and had breakfast with them. He was expected to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai later in the day.
Cheney arrived Monday evening from Islamabad, where he held talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf about the security situation in Afghanistan.
In a second suicide bombing Tuesday, a bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body outside a government office in Kandahar, the capital of the southern province of the same name, killing a girl and himself and wounding two other people, local police said.
Esmatullah Alizai, the provincial police chief, told dpa that the attack occurred about 9:15 a.m. as the bomber tried to gain entry into the national security directorate in downtown Kandahar.
'He was recognized before he could enter the building and detonated himself,' Alizai said.
Tuesday's attacks came a day after another suicide bomber killed himself and a police officer in the south-eastern province of Khost.
The attack took place in Khost city when officers stopped the man outside a police station.
The Taliban has intensified its operations in Afghanistan after a lull during the harsh Afghan winter. The violence so far this year has killed about 400 people, mostly insurgents.
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