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Four Britons hurt by suicide attack in Afghan south | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) -Four Britons were wounded on Sunday after a suicide bomber rammed a car into their vehicle in Afghanistan”s restive southern province of Kandahar, a senior Afghan official said.

The incident, the second suicide car attack against westerners in less than a week in Kandahar, happened in heavy traffic on a main road about 1 km (half a mile) from a U.S. military base, not far from the city center.

Kandahar governor Assadullah Khalid said the four were on an official visit to the province to help the local government with customs regulations.

&#34Two of them have been badly wounded, while the other two are not so serious,&#34 Khalid told Reuters. He said the identity of the bomber was unclear.

Earlier, residents said two passers by were also hurt in the incident.

Kandahar is a base for foreign troops pursuing Taliban and allied Islamic militants. Foreign aid workers are also stationed in the city, once the main bastion of the Taliban, the country”s former rulers who were overthrown by U.S.-led forces in 2001.

Although suicide attacks have been rare in Afghanistan compared with turbulent Iraq, there have been a series of such raids recently.

On Wednesday, a suicide attacker drove his car at a convoy of Canadian troops outside Kandahar city. There were no casualties among the troops, but the attacker and one child were killed.

More than 10 U.S.-trained Afghan national army officers were killed in the capital a week earlier after a suicide attacker rode a motorbike at a convoy carrying the troops.

Taliban members have claimed responsibility for such attacks, but no one from the militant group could be reached about Sunday”s incident. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi was captured in neighboring Pakistan last week.

More than 1,000 people, mostly militants, have died in the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan this year, the bloodiest one since the Taliban”s fall. On Friday, a U.S. soldier was killed in a roadside bomb in neighboring Helmand province.