The toll in a massive bombing that ripped through Afghanistan's troubled southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday has risen to at least 40, a senior police officer said Wednesday.
More than 65 others were injured when the truck bomb exploded in the centre of the city as people were breaking their Ramadan fast, General Ghulam Ali Wahdat, the southern police zone commander, told AFP.
"It was a truck bomb. In total 40 to 41 people have been killed and over 65 other people have been wounded," he said.
The vehicle bomb, planted near a construction company and government offices, heavily damaged homes and trapped casualties under the rubble as rescue workers frantically tried to dig them out of the debris under the cover of darkness, officials said.
The deaths of 40 people would make it the deadliest explosion in Afghanistan since a suicide car bomber killed more than 60 people, including two senior diplomats, in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008.
Kandahar is the biggest city in southern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents fighting the Western-backed government have strongholds.
"It felt like an earthquake. The power went off and there was a huge explosion," said Agha Lalai, a member of the Kandahar provincial council.
"When I checked with security sources they told me that five cars exploded all at the same time," he added, although officials confirmed one explosion.
The bomb went off near a guest house frequented by foreigners, near the Kandahar provincial intelligence headquarters and less than a kilometre from the home of Ahmad Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Wali Karzai, the controversial younger sibling of the president -- who was declared narrowly in the lead Tuesday in a neck-and-neck race to win a second term following landmark elections last week -- said it was a vehicle bomb.
"It was either a tanker or a truck bomb and the target was a Japanese construction company," said Wali Karzai, who is head of the provincial council and has been accused in the Western media of involvement in the drugs' trade
"The Japanese were not there but Afghan and Pakistani workers may have been in the building. Doors and windows have blown out and glass broken up to one kilometre (half a mile) diameter and has caused heavy casualties," he said.
Deputy Kandahar police chief Fazel Ahmad Shairzad said: "It was a truck bomb which has caused all these casualties and damage. At this stage we don't know what was the target of the blast. We are investigating."
Residents in the southern city said they heard a huge explosion in a normally bustling street and close to a large complex with a wedding hall, which one police official said was on fire, shops and hotel rooms.
Afghanistan, like the rest of the Muslim world is observing the holy month of Ramadan with fasting from dawn to dusk, when people generally go home to eat and so the district was less busy than normal.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the ministry spokesman blamed the attack on Taliban-linked insurgents.
Kandahar was the powerbase of the former Taliban regime, which was ousted from power in Afghanistan by the 2001 US-led invasion and replaced with a Western-backed administration.
The Taliban have struck repeatedly in recent weeks during what was a bloody countdown to nationwide elections last week, which marked only the second time that war-weary Afghans have voted for a president in their history.
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