Blast in southern Afghanistan, 2 dead

Kabul: A suicide bomber killed two civilians in southern Afghanistan on Monday in what an Afghan minister claimed was an assassination attempt, officials said.

Assadullah Khalid, minister of border and tribal affairs and chief security coordinator for the south, said he was the target of the blast in Kandahar, the region's biggest city.

But the Afghan interior ministry said there was no evidence the blast had targeted Khalid, saying he had left the scene before the explosion took place.

"There was an explosion -- a suicide bomber wearing explosives on his body detonated in an area where there was not an obvious target," interior ministry spokesman Siddiq Siddiqui told AFP.

The Kandahar provincial media office said one person was killed and 19 injured, including six children. But Siddiqui and local police chief Abdul Raziq put the death toll at two.

Khalid, who is an aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said: "The target of the bombing was me. I was travelling to attend a meeting (shura) and I'd passed by when the explosion took place."

He later admitted he had been five kilometres (three miles) away from the scene of the attack.

In July, Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, a key figure in the south and head of Kandahar's provincial council, was killed at his home in the city.