South Afghan attacks kill 35,including 13 police: official

Coordinated explosions in a key southern Afghan city has killed 35 people and injured another 57.

Coordinated explosions in a key southern Afghan city killed 35 people and injured another 57,a government spokesman said on Sunday.

Suicide bomb attacks and crude bomb blasts rocked Kandahar city late yesterday,causing widespread carnage and panic in an assault later claimed by the militant Taliban,interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashery said.

“A total of 35 people were killed – 13 police officers and 22 civilians,” he told reporters,adding that the 57 injured included 40 civilians and 17 police officers. He said the city had been hit by five suicide bomb attacks and improvised bomb explosions at 8 pm (1530 GMT) on Saturday

Kandahar’s provincial governor Turyalai Wisa said earlier that seven explosions had hit the city,in what appears to be the biggest coordinated attack in Afghanistan since the start of a Taliban insurgency in 2001.

He told reporters early today the casualty figure could rise as rescue workers were still searching the rubble for bodies.

A Taliban spokesman,named as Yousuf Ahmadi,said that the militants had carried out the attack at Kandahar’s main prison and targeted other government buildings around the city.