Suicide attack kills seven Afghan policemen

KUNDUZ/KABUL: A suicide attacker rammed a car bomb into a joint Afghan-NATO military convoy in northern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing seven police and injuring five civilians, officials said.

The officers and soldiers were on a patrol in the insurgent-troubled Imamsaheb district of northeastern Kunduz province when they came under attack, district administrator Mohammad Ayoub told AFP.

The interior ministry confirmed the toll of dead and wounded, while NATO said some coalition troops had been injured, without giving further details. Ayoub said the bomber was driving an explosives-laden car, which detonated on hitting the convoy.

In the capital Kabul, an improvised bomb exploded, hitting a police jeep, but there were no casualties, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.The bomb was set off along a main road in the east of the city as a police vehicle passed by, he said, adding that an investigation was under way.

Cheap and easy to make, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the most commonly used weapon by the Taliban, fighting an increasingly deadly insurgency focused mostly in the south and east of the country.

In eastern Nangarhar province eight Taliban insurgents were killed in the Khogyani district during a clash with Afghan security forces late Wednesday, police spokesman Abdul Ghafour told AFP.