Afghan suicide blast kills 15 civilians

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - A suicide attack near NATO troops ripped through a small town in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing 15 Afghans and wounding 25, the alliance's military force said.
The insurgent Taleban movement, behind a wave of suicide blasts in Afghanistan, said it carried out the attack near the district centre of Khogyani in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
"Fifteen local nationals have been killed and 25 wounded," Major Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told AFP in Kabul.
O'Donnell said there were ISAF soldiers in the area when the attack erupted, starting with gunfire, but none were harmed.
"Insurgents engaged with small arms fire and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades)," he told AFP in Kabul.
"It appears that when that happened, people went for cover. They (the attackers) snuck a suicide bomber in in the midst of the confusion."
It was not immediately clear if the ISAF soldiers or the district administration offices were the target of the blast.
Soon afterwards, a doctor in the city of Jalalabad, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) away, told AFP five bodies and nine wounded had been brought to the main hospital.
Hospital authorities said later they needed time to tally the total number dead and wounded, said an AFP reporter at the hospital who saw four civilians in bloodied clothes being rushed in.
A man claiming to be a Taleban commander for the region said a Taleban loyalist had carried out the attack.
"We claim responsibility for the blast in Khogyani," said the man, who identified himself as Qari Sajad. "It was a suicide attack carried out by one of our friends named Abdullah."