The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Kandahar

A Taliban suicide car bomb ripped into a NATO military convoy in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four soldiers and three civilians, the alliance and police said.

The bomb in the southern province of Helmand struck a convoy near the town of Girishk on the main road linking the southern city of Kandahar with Herat in the west, a witness said.

Four soldiers with NATO's International Security Assistance Force were killed and four more were wounded in the attack, the ISAF media office in Kabul told AFP.

ISAF, which draws troops from nearly 40 countries, does not release the nationalities of its casualties. Most of the alliance's soldiers in Helmand are British.

"Three civilians were killed and seven were wounded in the blast," Helmand province police chief Mohammad Hussain Andiwal said.

"It was a busy hour of the day when everyone was going to their work," Andiwal said, adding that all of the dead were men.

One of the Taliban's main spokesmen, Yousuf Ahmadi, confirmed the attack was carried out by a fighter from the extremist militia, which was in government between 1996 and 2001.