Seventeen civilians, a dozen of them schoolboys, were killed and 30 others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.




NATO's International Security Assistance Force said eight of its soldiers were wounded in the attack, some of them seriously.

A spokesman for the extremist Taliban movement, which is waging an insurgency against the Afghan government with the support of Al-Qaeda-linked operatives, claimed responsibility for the blast in Uruzgan province.

The bomber, who was on foot, blew himself up as a convoy of ISAF troops passed through a bazaar in the small town of Dehrawood, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) southwest of Kabul, provincial police chief General Mohammad Qasem told AFP.



"There was a suicide bombing. Seventeen people -- all of them civilians -- have been killed and around 30 others were injured," he told AFP, citing figures provided by police on the ground.

He said later that 12 of the dead were boys aged between 10 and 15. The remainder were adult men. The interior ministry also said 17 people were killed.

"It was a huge explosion," said a grocer who identified himself only as Subhanullah.

"A large number of people were killed and injured. They were laying on the road," he told AFP by telephone from his shop, which he said was less than 100 metres (yards) from the blast site.

The force of the explosion shattered the windows of his store, and others lining the street, and knocked items off the shelves, he said.

Subhanullah said the targeted convoy drove off without stopping but returned later with Afghan security forces to investigate.

ISAF confirmed that the Dehrawood blast was a suicide attack.

"There are ISAF and civilian casualties," spokesman Major John Thomas said in Kabul, saying more than a dozen civilians were dead and more than 30 wounded.

The NATO-led force does not release the nationalities of its casualties and would not confirm that the blast was in Uruzgan, where most ISAF troops are from The Netherlands.

"This is an indiscriminate use of a Taliban extremist bomb which has killed and injured both civilians and soldiers," said another ISAF spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Smith.

Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi, speaking to AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location, said the bombing had been "bravely carried out by one of our mujahedin (holy warriors)."



Tuesday's blast was the deadliest suicide attack since one in Kabul on June 17 that killed 35 people, most of them police trainers.

The Kabul bombing was the worst insurgent attack since the Taliban were driven from government in late 2001 by a US-led alliance.

Civilians are increasingly caught up in the insurgency. About 600 have been killed in the violence this year, according to figures used by the United Nations, around half by Afghan and foreign troops and the rest by militants.

There have been more than 70 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, as compared with about 140 in all of 2006. Most are aimed at the security forces but civilians are usually the primary victims.

The violence has intensified this summer with major battles across the country. About 3,000 people have been killed in 2007, most of them rebels, according to statistics compiled by AFP.

The UN representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, was shocked.

"I am especially concerned by the reports I am seeing of a large number of children being among the dead from todays bomb," he said in a statement.

"Such utter disregard for innocent lives is staggering and those behind this must be held responsible."