Car Bomb Hits U.S. Company, Landmine Blast Kills 10 Girls in Afghanistan

A car bomb exploded Monday at a compound owned by a U.S.-based construction company under contract to the Afghan army, killing at least one person and wounding 15, police said.

Five foreigners including Americans and South Africans were among the wounded, a security source at the company told AFP.

"A small truck packed with explosives detonated between CONTRACK and Najeeb Zarab factories -- one person is dead and 15 others are wounded," Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi told AFP.

"We don't yet know whether there was someone in the truck or it was detonated remotely. We are investigating this right now. They were very powerful explosives."

CONTRACK is a U.S.-owned company which builds Afghan army and police facilities, an employee said.

"We were sitting in the office. There was a massive explosion. The ceiling collapsed over us and 10 to 12 Afghans in the office were wounded," he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but similar attacks are usually blamed on Taliban insurgents fighting the Afghan government and NATO troops.

A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force confirmed the explosion but said it was not at NATO's Camp Phoenix, which is also in the area in the east of the capital near the scene of the bombing.

An AFP reporter at the scene said there were signs of a huge explosion beyond an area blocked off by police, and some bystanders outside the compound had also suffered minor injuries.

In May Taliban bombers attacked a heavily fortified guesthouse used by Westerners in the same area.

Seven people were killed after attackers disguised in burqas detonated a suicide car bomb and clashed with guards at the "Green Village" complex used by the European Union, the United Nations and aid groups.

Moreover, ten young girls were killed when a landmine exploded Monday while they were collecting firewood in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, officials said.

The girls, aged between nine and 11, died when one of them accidentally struck the mine with an axe, Chaparhar district governor Mohammad Sediq Dawlatzai told Agence France Presse.

"An old mine left over from the time of the jihad (against Soviet troops in the 1980s) exploded, killing 10 girls and wounding two others," he said.

Nangarhar provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said, however, that the mine was planted by "the enemies of Afghanistan" -- a reference to Taliban insurgents -- even if it had been in that spot for some time.

Since 1989, when the Soviets withdrew after a 10-year military presence, nearly 700,000 mines and more than 15 million explosive left-overs from decades of war have been destroyed, according to U.N. figures.

But despite international clearance efforts, more than three decades of war have left Afghanistan one of the most heavily-mined countries in the world.

The explosives were placed during three recent conflicts: the 1980s war against the Russians, the 1990s civil war and during fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban before they were ousted from power in 2001.

The Taliban now plant bombs, or improvised explosive devices, to target Afghan troops and their NATO backers but which regularly kill civilians.