Topic: Suicide Bomber Kills 8 At Afghan Compound

Washington Post
December 13, 2006

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber blew himself up at the governor's compound in southern Helmand province on Tuesday, killing six policemen and two civilians, officials said. A purported spokesman for the Taliban Islamic militia, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, asserted responsibility for the blast in a phone call to the Associated Press.
[The governor, Mohammed Daud, was fired Monday by President Hamid Karzai over the protests of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, less than a year after he was appointed with British and U.S. support, Washington Post correspondent Pamela Constable reported. The government did not explain its actions.]
Daud was not in the office at the time of the blast.
Helmand is the largest opium poppy cultivation region in Afghanistan, which supplies the base for most of the world's heroin, and it is overrun by Taliban fighters. They relentlessly attacked British forces there until a deal was struck in the summer that allowed the fighters to live peacefully in one district.