Three explosions kill 11 in southern Afghanistan (Reuters)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) ? Three separate explosions killed 11 people and wounded dozens of others in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Tuesday, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks in the volatile region.

In the first attack, four children and a policeman were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a police checkpoint in Kandahar city, said Zalmay Ayoubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor.

"The bomber was on a motorbike and detonated his explosives before reaching his target," he told Reuters.

He said the bomber's target was the police checkpoint, but his bomb went off prematurely. Sixteen others, including six children and three policemen, were wounded.

Later on Tuesday two separate explosions killed six and wounded 19 in the same city, Ayoubi added.

"There was an explosion, and as soon as police and locals rushed to help the victims, another explosion happened, which killed two civilians and four police officers," he said.

The wounded included seven police officers. Both blasts took place in Chawk Madad, a market area in the city at 1500 GMT.

Ayoubi said the first explosion was a relatively small one. The last blast came from a three-wheel motorcycle and police are still investigating how it was activated.

So far nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Kandahar province is the Taliban's birthplace and a focus of recent efforts by a surge of U.S. troops to turn the tide against the insurgency in the decade-long war.

A suicide bomber killed the mayor of Kandahar in July last year, only two weeks after President Hamid Karzai's powerbroker half-brother was killed inside his house in that same city.

Despite the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan, U.N. and other aid agencies say violence is at its worst level since the Taliban government was toppled by U.S.-led coalition troops a decade ago.

Last year was one of the deadliest for Afghan civilians, with thousands lives lost in insurgency-related incidents and operations involving foreign and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

(Writing by Agnieszka Flak and Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Matthew Jones)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120103/wl_nm/us_afghanistan_attack

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