Bomber targets governor, kills 4 Afghans

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 4 (Reuters) A suspected Taliban suicide car bomber killed at least four Afghans in the southern city of Kandahar today in an attack on the provincial governor as he travelled with a convoy of Canadian troops, officials said.

Governor Assadullah Khalid survived the attack in the heart of the city, but police were unsure whether there were casualties among the Canadian troops.

''The target of the attack was the governor,'' Khalid's spokesman, Dawud Ahmadi, said, adding that four people were killed and 13 wounded.

The identity of the bomber was unknown but there have been several suicide attacks in Kandahar by Taliban insurgents over the past few months.

Two days earlier a suicide car bomber killed three civilians and himself on a road outside the city.

The attacks come during the bloodiest phase of a Taliban-led insurgency that has raged since US-led coalition forces overthrew the militants' radical Islamic government in 2001.

More than 900 people have been killed in the insurgency since the start of the year, half of them in May.

A rise in Taliban activity in the south coincides with preparations for NATO-led peacekeepers to take control of southern provinces from coalition forces, which have had a more offensive mission to hunt down Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.

Reuters SY GC1142