Suicide bomber attacks Afghan police, one killed

KHOST, Afghanistan, Oct 6 (Reuters) A suicide bomber today blew himself up at the gates of police headquarters in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, killing himself and a policeman, the police said.

Taliban rebels, fighting an intensified insurgency that has included a wave of suicide attacks, claimed responsibility.

Afghanistan's NATO force yesterday assumed responsibility for Khost and the rest of the east when it took command of US coalition troops there, extending its command to the whole country.

''Police wanted to search him when he blew himself up,'' provincial police chief Mohammad Ayub said of the attack at his headquarters. Twenty people, eight of them them policemen, were wounded, he said.

In a second attack in Khost province, a suicide bomber arriving from neighbouring Pakistan blew himself up at a border checkpoint.

He killed himself and wounded a taxi driver, police said.

Suicide blasts used to be unheard of in Afghanistan, but there have been scores of such attacks since last year when militants in Afghanistan began copying tactics used by Iraqi insurgents.

A Taliban commander, Mullah Hayat Khan, said by telephone the bomber who attacked the police headquarters was an Afghan member of the Taliban. There was no immediate claim for the second blast.

Violence in Afghanistan this year has been the most intense since US-led forces ousted the hardline Taliban five years ago, weeks after the September 11 attacks.

REUTERS SHB ND1506