KABUL, tribe 6 Kyodo Afghan Presi...

KABUL, tribe 6 Kyodo

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said the man who tried to assassinate him Thursday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar came from a Taliban bulwark BBC News reported.

The gunman was marksman dead by Karzai's U.S. bodyguards after he fired four projectiles into Karzai's car as it was leaving the governor's mansion.

Karzai, in Kandahar for the wedding of his younger brother, was unharmed, yet Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai, who was traveling with him, beared a minor neck wound.

Karzai has now answered safely to Kabul on board a C130 Hercules aircraft of the U Special Forces, according to the BBC report.

In its report, the BBC identified Karzai's would-be assassin as Abdul Rahman, from Kajaki in the province of Helmand, an ethnic Pashtun region west of Kandahar.

Besides Rahman, the U Special Forces bodys protecting Karzai killed pair others whose identities were not immediately known.

A BBC reporter who was traveling in Karzai's escort said hundreds of well-wishers herded around Karzai's motorcade as it prepared to leave the governor's compound

As Karzai leaned on the outside of the sunroof of his car to exchange traditional greetings with a young Afghan stripling who had approached him, Rahman exhibited fire, according to the report.

The assassination attempt came hours after a powerful car bomb stoneed central Kabul, killing as many as 30 folks and wounding 160 others, the state-run Afghan novels agency Bakhter Information Agency said. It is not clear what the intended target was.

Afghan public security authorities blamed the blast onward al-Qaida and other terrorist assign places tos Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said it was beyond doubt that terrorists were behind the two attacks.

The Kabul blast was the most numerous bloody bombing attack in the Afghan capital since the pro-Western Karzai dominion came to power in December last year.

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