by Sharif Khoram –

November 13, 2009

KABUL (AFP) –

A suicide bomber struck near a US military base in Kabul on Friday, wounding foreign soldiers and Afghan civilians less than a week before the inauguration of President Hamid Karzai, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, one of a rising number of bombings in the Afghan capital.

"Three foreign soldiers have been injured. They are possibly American," said Abdul Ghasar Aayedzada, criminal police investigation chief for Kabul.

He said the attack occurred around 7:45 am (0315 GMT) when a suicide bomber in a car blew up alongside a coalition forces vehicle heading toward Camp Phoenix on the road between Kabul and the eastern town of Jalalabad.

Three civilians were also wounded, although their injuries were not serious, the police officer told reporters.

A witness, who gave his name only as Mohammed, said he was sitting in his truck drinking tea when a small convoy of foreign troops passed.

"I saw a grey Corolla and a man driving it with a white hat on. He blew himself up and there was a huge cloud of dust," the trucker said.

The blast was heard across the capital, including by an AFP reporter more than five kilometres (three miles) away in central Kabul.

The attack struck about 400 metres from the camp's main gate. The explosives blew the bomber's car to pieces, spreading debris around the road and damaging several other vehicles, an AFP reporter said.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed that the explosion was caused by a "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device".

"Reports indicate Afghan civilians, ISAF service members and civilian contractors were wounded in the blast as the vehicle exploded near an ISAF convoy and other civilian vehicles," an ISAF statement said.

An ISAF spokesman was unable to give further details.

Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, told AFP in a telephone call from an undisclosed location that the group carried out the suicide attack.

Camp Phoenix, on the outskirts of Kabul, is run by US forces but other NATO member nations also maintain a presence there.

Afghan soldiers are trained at the base by international troops, who have put the training of Afghanistan's security forces at the heart of efforts to hand over responsibility for fighting the Taliban insurgency.

The website of Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix says the training effort is led primarily by the US National Guard who, as of September, had more than 1,700 national guardsmen there.

Security experts in Kabul have warned that the Taliban could be planning attacks ahead of Karzai's inauguration, scheduled next Thursday.

NATO and US-led troops are helping the government battle the insurgency now at its deadliest in the eight years since US-led forces toppled the Islamist regime and swept Karzai into power.

Huge fraud that marred the August 20 presidential election in Afghanistan highlighted the scale of government corruption and has led to enormous international pressure on Karzai's new administration to clean up.

Obama is now seeking to show a strong US commitment to Afghanistan but also convey to Karzai's corruption-tainted government that the US military presence had a time limit, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said.

General Stanley McChrystal, the Afghan war commander, wants more than 40,000 additional US troops over the next year. He has warned that the mission is likely to fail without them.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was trying to persuade NATO partners in Europe and other allies to commit 5,000 troops to the Afghanistan war.

NATO member Germany said it is sending 120 extra soldiers.

In other unrest, an Afghan policeman on the Turkmenistan border was killed late Thursday by a roadside bomb planted by the Taliban, said Rahmatullah Sadiqi, chief of staff of the western border police region.

In neighbouring Pakistan, around two dozen suspected Taliban gunmen torched five trucks carrying fuel to NATO forces in Afghanistan, killing a driver, police said.