Afghan civilians killed in convoy attack

KABUL (CNN) -- A suicide bomber rammed his car into a Canadian military convoy near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan Monday, killing 35 civilians, officials said.

The explosion also injured at least 25 people, including two Canadian soldiers, said Kandahar border police commander General Abdul Raziq.

The attack took place in a market area in the town of Spin Boldak, he said.

The death toll from Sunday's suicide bomb that exploded in a crowd of spectators at a dog fighting match has topped 100, a provincial governor told CNN Monday.

The explosion, one of the deadliest in the country's history since the hard-line Islamist movement, the Taliban, was routed in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, wounded dozens more in the western section of Kandahar.

A man with explosives strapped around his body detonated the bombs among a crowd in the Arghandab district, some 6 miles (10 km) north of Kandahar city, said Kandahar province Gov. Assadullah Khalid. Among the dead were at least eight children.

Officials said the blast apparently targeted Haji Hakeem Jan, who battled the Soviets during their invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and also fought Taliban militants in 1995 when they captured Kandahar.

Late last year when the Taliban tried to penetrate the district, he along with his tribesmen helped the Afghan and Canadian forces push them out of the area, officials said.

He was recently appointed as commander of a militia group that worked in concert with Afghan police and soldiers to contain militants in the district.

Authorities think that the dogfighting itself could also have been targeted. It has enjoyed a resurgence in Afghanistan after the Taliban banned it, calling it un-Islamic. E-mail to a friend

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