The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Kabul

At least 47 people were killed in suicide attack and fighting in Afghanistan on Thursday.

A suicide car bomber rammed a convoy carrying foreign troops near the airport in the Afghan capital Kabul Thursday, killing six civilians and wounding another 18, police said.

The extremist Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the blast, which happened during the morning rush-hour on one of the city's busiest roads and damaged around a dozen vehicles.

"Six civilians were martyred and 18 other civilians were wounded in the suicide car bomb attack against coalition forces," Kabul police chief General Salim Ahsas told AFP, referring to the US-led coalition.

Ahsas told AFP the blast did not harm foreign troops who were travelling on the road to Kabul's international airport when the bomb exploded.

A spokesman for the US coalition could not immediately comment on the incident.

Two armoured vehicles, apparently the target of the attack, were damaged, an AFP reporter at the scene said. Blood and scraps of human flesh littered the road along with the wreckage of cars, some of which were on fire.

The force of the blast damaged about 10 cars, General Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of the police criminal investigation branch told AFP.

The wounded were rushed to different hospitals in the city, he added.

AP report adds: A provincial governor in Kandahar says Afghan and international forces have killed 41 Taliban militants in a battle in southern Afghanistan.

Nimroz Gov. Ghulam Dastagir Azad said the insurgents were traveling Wednesday through neighboring Helmand province when the joint forces attacked them.

Azad says the troops employed airstrikes during the four-hour battle in Helmand province, killing 41 militants.

He says 17 of the dead were from Nimroz, including a commander named Mullah Tor Jan. Their bodies have been transferred to the province.

The Taliban, an Islamic militant group that was in government in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, said it was behind the blast -- similar to scores of others carried out by the insurgents.

"We claim responsibility for the suicide attack in Kabul today," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a telephone call from an unknown location.

"The attack was against two foreign military vehicles which killed all the soldiers in the two vehicles."

The Taliban have often made claims about casualties from attacks which subsequently prove exaggerated.