TASEK PAUH blogspot

Kabul, March 20 - A car bomber has ended months of relative calm in Kabul by exploding his car next to a US embassy convoy, killing an Afghan teenager and wounding five US security personnel.

Monday's suicide blast, the first in Kabul since December, hurled one of the armoured 4WDs across Jalalabad Road and left two other US vehicles damaged.

A 15-year-old Afghan on the side of the road was killed, said Hasib Arian, the district police chief.

Five US embassy security personnel were injured, one seriously, said Colonel Tom Collins, the spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force.

Ambassador unhurt

Ronald Neumann, the US ambassador, was not in the convoy, Joe Mellott, an embassy spokesman, said.

Later, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said in a phone call to AP that a Taliban activist from Khost province carried out the attack.

US embassy security teams sealed off the road, and initially prevented Afghan police, Nato soldiers and photographers, including those of Al Jazeera, from getting close to the vehicles.

The route is often used by American soldiers travelling to the main US coalition base at Bagram outside the capital and also to various military bases on the outskirts of Kabul.

Reporting from the blast site, John Cookson, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said: "The Jalalabad Road is notorious for suicide bombers; it is used frequently by US convoys. Today's target was a line of US embassy vehicles heading for Kabul.

"The bomber struck in a white car with devastating consequences." One Afghan witness said: "I heard a loud explosion, I went outside - there was a lot of fire and smoke."

Cookson said: "The bombing comes as US and Nato forces increase the pressure on the Taliban in an ongoing guerrilla war and the Taliban responding with suicide bombers - this is the first in Kabul in three months." alJazeera & Agencies

Labels: Afghanistan, Luar Negeri