Afghan bomb attack on Canadian convoy kills passer-by

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Sep 17 (Reuters) A suicide bomber attacked a Canadian military convoy in southern Afghanistan today, killing himself and a passer-by, a day after US-led forces launched a new offensive against a resurgent Taliban.

The Taliban and their militant allies have unleashed a wave of attacks, including scores of suicide blasts, on government and foreign troops this year. Security forces have responded with a series of offensives.

A passer-by was killed and five were wounded when the suicide bomber rammed his mini-van into the Canadian convoy on the outskirts of the southern city of Kandahar, said police officer Mohammad Yaseen.

A spokesman for the NATO-led force said three of its soldiers were very slightly hurt and one vehicle slightly damaged.

''They dusted themselves off, changed the tyres on their vehicle and carried on,'' said the spokesman, Flight Lieutenant Euan Downie.

He declined to specify their nationality.

The level of violence five years after the Taliban were ousted has surprised the government and its Western allies and raised concern about the prospects for a country that had been seen as a success in the war on terrorism.

In a separate incident, NATO said 17 insurgents were killed in an airstrike in the southern province of Uruzgan on Friday night after they were spotted planting bombs on a road near a NATO base.

NATO commands about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, in the north, west and south. The United States has a similar number in a separate force, operating in central and eastern provinces.

About 130 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, most of them Americans, British and Canadians.

MOUNTAIN FURY The US military said on Saturday 7,000 and Afghan government forces launched an offensive against the Taliban in central and eastern provinces.

Operation Mountain Fury, which involves 3,000 U.S.-led troops and 4,000 Afghans, is the third offensive launched in recent weeks against the Taliban.

About 10,000 NATO and Afghan troops launched a big offensive codenamed Medusa in Kandahar on September 2.

NATO, which hopes to push back the Taliban and begin to shift its focus to providing security for reconstruction work, says its forces have killed more than 400 insurgents since then.

Troops from the U.S.-led force have been battling insurgents in the eastern province of Kunar, on the Pakistani border, in a third offensive.

But while international and Afghan troops have been mounting offensives in the south and east, militant attacks have increased in parts of the country previously considered largely safe, including Kabul and the west.

Three Afghan aid workers were killed in a roadside blast near Kabul yesterday, just over a week after a suicide car-bomber attacked a US military patrol in th capital, killing 16 people including two US soldiers.

The Taliban have also threatened to kill a Turk kidnapped in an ambush last month unless a Turkish construction company withdraws from the country by a Sunday evening deadline, a Taliban spokesman said.

REUTERS LL RK1433