Nato troops among victims of Kabul suicide blast

A suicide bomber struck a security checkpoint in Afghanistan's city of Khost on Wednesday, killing at least 16 people and wounding 30, police said.

A spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force said the casualties included foreign troops, but declined to say how many and whether that meant deaths or injuries. 

Sardar Mohammad Zazai, police chief of Khost province, said the bomber, riding a motorbike, detonated his explosives at the checkpoint manned by local and foreign security forces. 

The attack took place near a mosque in a crowded part of the city, which lies near the border with Pakistan. Women and children were among the wounded, local officials said. 

Khost is a main area of operations for the Taliban-linked Haqqani militant group which the United States says has been behind a string of bombings in Kabul as well as attacks on foreign forces in the countryside.

A witness said that Nato and Afghan troops were using biometric data to screen residents of the provincial capital when the bomber struck.

"Then suddenly there was an explosion. I saw many killed and wounded including Afghan police and foreign troops. We carried some of them to the hospital," said Gul Mohammad, whose shop was near the scene of the blast.

Earlier this month, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an assault on a U.S. base in the same province. That attack killed one U.S. soldier, a U.S. contractor and one Afghan civilian, Nato officials later said. 

Nato said 14 insurgents were killed in the June 1 attack, carried out by fighters wearing suicide-bomb vests and firing rocket-propelled grenades.
 

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