HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — Three foreign nationals were hurt in a suicide car bomb attack in western Afghanistan on Friday as hundreds of Afghans protested in the south after US troops killed 11 suspected militants.
The suicide attacker struck a convoy leaving a police training centre on the outskirts of the western city of Herat, US officials said. Two Afghan women were also slightly hurt by shattered glass, witnesses said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which was similar to scores carried out by extremist Taliban militants waging an insurgency against the US-backed government.
"Two civilian contractors were wounded this morning in western Afghanistan when their convoy was struck by a suicide vehicle bomber," the US military said in a statement that did not identify the civilians.
An international soldier was also slightly hurt, a US military official told AFP separately.
The civilians worked for the US-based security company DynCorp and were involved in training Afghan police, a US government official said, without releasing their nationalities.
The Taliban were ousted in a US-led invasion for sheltering Al-Qaeda after the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.
Their insurgency, which makes heavy use of suicide and other bombings, has been at its fiercest this year despite the efforts of nearly 70,000 foreign troops under US and NATO command, and their Afghan counterparts.
The US military announced meanwhile it had killed 11 militants in the southern province of Kandahar in an operation against a Taliban network behind a series of roadside bombings, including some that killed foreign soldiers.
The militants targeted in the district of Maiwand, a Taliban stronghold about 75 kilometres (45 miles) west of the city of Kandahar, had opened fire on the troops on Thursday from inside a compound.
The soldiers retaliated with gunfire and hand grenades, it said in a statement.
"After neutralising the threat, the force searched the buildings, discovering 11 militants were killed," it said.
Troops also found landmines, grenades and machine-guns as well as bomb-making material, which they destroyed, the statement said. A building collapsed in secondary blasts caused by the mines.
Afghan authorities also said those killed appeared to have been militants, but locals claimed most were ordinary shopkeepers.
"They were civilians -- most of them I knew were vendors selling stuff in the district," a resident who gave his name as Mohammed Saleh told AFP by telephone.
A district official said hundreds of people had demonstrated against the US operation, blocking a main road for several hours and burning tyres.
In other incidents, three Afghan policemen were killed when a bomb struck their vehicle in southern Helmand province on Thursday, provincial police chief Asadullah Sherzad said.
Elsewhere, three Afghans working for a road construction company were kidnapped by suspected Taliban in the northwestern province of Badghis, provincial police chief Mohammad Ayub Niaz Yar said.
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