Suicide car bombing in Afghanistan kills 29

A huge suicide car bombing struck Thursday outside a bank in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, targeting Afghan troops and government employees waiting to collect their salaries ahead of a major Muslim holiday and killing at least 29 people, officials said.

Hayatullah Hayat, the provincial governor in Helmand, said most of the casualties were civilians. The explosion near the Kabul Bank in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah also wounded at least 60 people, he said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but Helmand has been at the centre of bitter battles between the Taliban and Afghan security forces, aided by NATO troops. The insurgents, believed to control nearly 80 per cent of the province's countryside, have increasingly been pressing a push onto Lashkar Gah and its environs in efforts to take the city.

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In recent weeks, the Taliban have overrun Helmand's key Sangin district, where both British and U.S. troops had fought for years to keep them at bay.

The attacker struck as scores of people, many of them Afghan soldiers or civil servants, were waiting near the Kabul Bank to collect their salaries ahead of the Eid -al-Fitr holiday, which follows the holy month of Ramdan, which is expected to end later this weekend.

Esmatullah, an Afghan border policeman, who was at the scene of the explosion said the noise from the blast was deafening. He said many are missing in the ensuing chaos as witnesses, survivors and ambulances struggled to ferry first the most seriously wounded to hospital.

"We are taking children to the hospital," said Esmatullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name.

Twelve-year-old Hosnia, was crying outside the bank as she searched for her father who had brought her to buy shoes ahead of the Muslim holiday.

"I couldn't find anyone, my brother and my father," she said. "My father told me he will take me to buy shoes. We came here and then there was the explosion."

Helmand is considered a key region because it is one of the largest opium producing provinces for the Taliban, who charge opium traffickers a hefty tax to move their contraband to market. Corrupt government officials also benefit from the production and trade of opium, the raw material used to make heroin.

Afghanistan is the world's largest opium-producing country, producing more than all other opium-producing countries combined, according to United Nations estimate.