Governor survives suicide attack: 11 more killed

A provincial governor survived a suicide attack yesterday but his security guard was killed, in fresh violence that left 11 dead across insurgency-hit Afghanistan, officials said.
A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-packed car into the convoy of the governor of eastern Khost province, killing the guard and injuring seven others, officials and medical sources said.
A doctor at the city hospital told AFP that the seven injured including three civilians -- two of them teenage boys -- were admitted for treatment in the provincial capital Khost, where the attack took place.
"I'm OK, but I don't have any information about the others," the governor, Arsala Jamal, told AFP after the bombing.
Jamal was returning from a ceremony to mark the opening of a new road built under the supervision of NATO-led forces when the bomber hit his convoy, according to a NATO spokeswoman, US Major Christine Nelson-Chung.
"We're horrified by the action taking against the life of the governor," Nelson-Chung said.
The attack was the latest in a wave of such incidents blamed on Taliban militants, who have waged an increasingly bloody insurgency since the hardline Islamic militia was ousted by a US-led invasion in late 2001.
Elsewhere, two shepherd boys were killed in the cross-fire as police clashed with Taliban rebels in the restive south of the country on Tuesday, a police commander said.
The children, from a nomadic tribe, died in fighting in Ghazni province, where Taliban militants have been holding 19 South Koreans hostage for more than a month.
"We're investigating to find out how those two kids were killed. We don't yet know if they were killed by police or enemy fire," provincial police chief Alishah Ahmadzai told AFP.
He said the fighting had lasted several hours and a number of Taliban were also killed, although he could not give a figure.
Two Taliban fighters died in a separate clash elsewhere in the province on Tuesday, he added.
In other clashes, two policemen and four militants were killed in fighting in the eastern province of Paktika.
The rebels, who are said to have Al-Qaeda's backing, have increasingly used tactics often employed by extremists in Iraq, such as suicide bombings and kidnappings.
In addition to the South Koreans, the Taliban have been holding a German engineer hostage for more than a month. The rebels have demanded the release of some of their jailed fighters for the hostages.
The government has rejected that demand, saying that to do so would encourage criminals in the war-shattered nation.