A suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of US-led troops in the main city of volatile southern Afghanistan, wounding up to three passers-by, police and witnesses said. The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body as the convoy passed near the governor's house in the centre of Kandahar city, said police official Said Ghafar. The attack was similar to one in the city exactly a week earlier when a man blew himself up near another coalition convoy, killing a passer-by and wounding a Canadian soldier and two civilians.Witnesses to the latest attack said they saw the bomber hurl himself at the first vehicle in the convoy. A coalition Humvee was slightly damaged and splattered with flesh and blood, an AFP correspondent said. The interior ministry said it was not clear who the blast was aimed at and the coalition headquarters in Kabul said it had no information of its forces being involved in an incident in Kandahar.
A witness named Gulalai said the attacker had been wearing a blanket-like Afghan shawl and had been sitting by the roadside for a while before the blast.
An Afghan soldier who had been travelling with the coalition convoy said: "We were just driving and suddenly we saw a guy who jumped onto an American vehicle and we heard the bang of an explosion." No one in the convoy was hurt, said the soldier, asking not to be identified.
Analysts say the suicide blasts and a spate of assassinations show a shift in tactics that may have been influenced by the increased presence of Al-Qaeda fighters among the insurgents. A purported Taliban spokesman confirmed a shift in strategy in a telephone call to AFP last month.