Afghan blasts kill four and injures 37

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives north of the Afghan capital, killing two people and injuring 20, including two U.S. soldiers, while two other civilians were killed in blasts in the south, officials said on Monday.

The suicide attacker struck as Afghan provincial authorities and U.S. forces held a weekly meeting inside the office of the governor of Parwan province in the local capital of Charikar, a politician from the province told Reuters.

A U.S. military vehicle burst into flames after being hit by the blast, the politician said, and U.S. forces blocked off the area in Charikar, 60 km (37 miles) north of Kabul.

Two U.S. soldiers were wounded in the incident, a U.S. military official said, without giving further details.

Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary, in Kabul, said no provincial officials were killed in the attack, the latest in a spell of intensifying violence this year in Afghanistan.

"The suicide car bomber blow himself up outside the governor's office on the road," Bashary said.

"The car belonging to foreigners was his target and the attack has resulted in the deaths of two Afghan civilians and 18 more were wounded," he said. "A translator for the foreigners and possibly some of them have been wounded too."

The incident came a day after 16 people, 14 of them children, were killed in a suicide attack outside a government building in southeastern Khost province, according to NATO-led forces.