Many dead in Afghan suicide blast

Attacks in the east are on the rise

A suicide bomb in eastern Afghanistan has killed at least 18 people, including 11 police officers, the government has said.

The explosion took place in Nangarhar province close to the Pakistani border.

Nato says that insurgents first attacked its troops, before a suicide bomber set off explosives, but no foreign troops were injured.

The Taleban, who have been fighting foreign and Afghan troops since 2001 said they carried out the attack.

The Afghan government said that 41 people, including two foreign journalists, were also injured in the incident.

The Interior Ministry added that the police were preparing to carry out an opium poppy eradication operation when the attack took place, in Khogyani district, south of the city of Jalalabad.

'Confusion'

"Insurgents engaged with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades," Major Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), told the French news agency AFP.

"It appears that when that happened, people went for cover. They [the attackers] snuck a suicide bomber in the midst of the confusion."

One man who witnessed the attack said he had seen a young boy carrying white papers approach the crowd.

"All of a sudden I saw a big, red flame from among the crowd where the boy was standing and a big explosion followed," the man told AFP.

"People were running and some were screaming. I don't remember much."

Civilians

The BBC's Alastair Leithead in Kabul says there has already been a significant increase in the number of attacks in eastern Afghanistan in the first few months of this year compared with 2007.

Taleban fighters launched scores of suicide attacks and other bombings last year. Most of those killed were civilians.

In other violence, Nato said that one of its personnel had been killed and another hurt in an attack in the north-eastern province of Kapisa.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's intelligence chief has said President Hamid Karzai was warned of a plot to assassinate him weeks before Sunday's attack on a Kabul military parade.

Amrullah Saleh told parliament the security services had failed in their duty to prevent the attack, from which Mr Karzai escaped unharmed. Three other people died.

The Taleban say they carried out the attack and that three of their fighters were killed.