Parwiz/Reuters
Afghan villagers gathered around the bodies of girls who were killed by an explosion on Monday.
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives targeted the compound of a private military contractor on the eastern outskirts of Kabul on Monday, killing at least one person and injuring at least 15 others, including foreigners, the police said.
In a separate episode, 10 girls were killed in a rural district of eastern Afghanistan on Monday when a roadside bomb exploded while they were collecting firewood, the Afghan police said. The office of the governor of Nangarhar Province said the girls were all between 9 and 11 years old. The Ministry of Education said some were as young as 6.
The Kabul explosion sent a large plume of smoke above the capital on the Jalalabad road, a main thoroughfare leading east out of the city lined with shops, yards and industrial units.
The target was a company called Contrack International, said Gen. Mohammed Dawood Amin, Kabul’s deputy chief of police. Officials said Contrack was a construction maintenance company that provided logistics services for the Afghan Army and police and NATO coalition bases.
“There was a blast, a boom and a wall fell down,” said Roheen Fedai, 19, who said he worked in the company’s call center. Shortly after the blast, he was wandering close to the compound with his hand in a bandage and blood on his face from an eye injury.
The car exploded in a small lane between the company and another compound housing a carton-making factory, blasting down walls and destroying a two-story office.
Barialyia, a security official for Contrack, said the company’s country director was wounded in the explosion. He said five American and South African citizens were among the injured.
Mr. Fedai said Contrack was an American-owned supplier to the Afghan military. Officials here also said the company was American-owned, but the company could not be reached to confirm this or other details about the attack. Its Web site says its headquarters are in McLean, Va., and shows that it has provided services for the United States military in the past.
The compound is close to a NATO base, Camp Phoenix, and other NATO installations. The Taliban claimed responsibility, but a coalition spokesman in Kabul, Lt. Col. Hagen Messer, said the attack did not affect the NATO bases, and there were no coalition casualties.
In the blast in eastern Afghanistan, Hazarat Hussain Masharaqiwal, a spokesman for the police chief of Nangarhar Province, said that the children discovered the unexploded bomb near their village, and that it went off when they hit it with an ax. The explosion also injured a boy who was with them.
The local police said the bomb probably dated from the civil war or even the Soviet occupation of the country.
The United States-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said the explosion was caused by the accidental triggering of an old land mine, quoting the governor of Chaparhar District in Nangarhar.
In a statement, Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of American and international forces in Afghanistan, said he was saddened by the girls’ deaths. “Over three decades of conflict, Afghanistan became one of the most heavily mined countries on earth,” he said.
10 Afghan Girls Killed in Old Mine Blast; Car Bomb Kills One in Kabul
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10 Afghan Girls Killed in Old Mine Blast; Car Bomb Kills One in Kabul
