Kabul - A suicide bomber detonated himself in the middle of a crowd in Kandahar city Sunday, killing at least 80 people and injuring dozens, the governor of the southern Afghanistan province said. "According to information from the hospitals, 60 dead bodies are in there (hospitals) and another 20 dead people were taken away by their relatives, so in total 80 people were killed," Assadullah Khalid told reporters in Kandahar.
The governor said a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a crowd of people gathered in western part of the city to watch a dog- fighting competition.
Officials in Kandahar said that the target of the attack was Haji Hakeem Jan, a former commander who fought the Taliban in 1995, and was among the dead.
Dog fights, a tradition in Afghanistan that attracts a large of number of spectators, were banned by the Taliban because they deemed it un-Islamic.
Sunday's attack was one of the deadliest since the ouster of Taliban regime in late 2001 in southern region. A similar bombing on the same scale occurred in northern Baghlan province in November, killing about 80 people, most of them schoolchildren, and six members of parliament.
Khalid was unable to give a precise number of those injured, saying "dozens were wounded, but we know have any figure now."
However, Abdullah Fahim, spokesman for the Health Ministry, said that around 90 people were wounded and were taken to provincial hospitals and a NATO-led hospital at Kandahar airfield.
Earlier, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said "dozens were killed and dozens more wounded."
Kandahar province is the birthplace of the Taliban militants, who are still entrenched there six years after being ousted from power by a US-led military invasion.
Afghanistan has witnessed an upsurge in suicide attacks recently. There were more than 140 such attacks last year, a record for the war-ravaged country since the formation of western-backed government.
No group claimed responsibility for the Sunday's attack.
In January 2006, a similar suicide bomber attacked a crowd of people watching a wrestling match in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar, killing 24 people. The Taliban denied any link to that attack.
