Two killed by car bomb outside Afghanistan drugs summit
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-25 08:34

A car bomb exploded outside the venue of an anti-drugs conference in eastern Afghanistan, killing two people including a policeman and wounding two others, a district official said.

The device detonated Thursday as local officials and elders were gathering for the meeting in eastern Nangarhar province's Khogiani district on the border with Pakistan, district chief Mohammad Omar Layiq told AFP.

"One policeman and one civilian were killed and two, including my deputy, were wounded in the explosion," Layiq said.

The bomb exploded in a car driven by one of the participants of the meeting, he said. The device may have been attached to the vehicle overnight when it was in a public parking lot, he said.

"We cannot blame the attack on anyone right now. The vehicle was parked in a lot before it was driven to the meeting. We have launched an investigation," Layiq said.

Police later arrested three suspects.

Similar blasts in the past have been blamed on remnants of the Taliban regime that was removed from power in a US-led campaign four years ago after they refused to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The government's efforts to stabilise war-ravaged Afghanistan have been undermined by violence blamed on Taliban and other anti-government insurgents and criminal gangs involved in the drugs trade.

The attack happened hours after the United Nations and United States government said land under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been drastically cut over the past year, for the first time since the 2001 fall of the Taliban.

Afghanistan produces about 87 percent of the world's opium, most of which ends up as heroin on the streets of Europe.

Nangarhar is one of the main routes for smuggling the drug out of the country and also has laboratories that converts opium gum into morphine base and then into heroin.

In a four-day operation in October, police in the province destroyed 30 opium-processing laboratories and tonnes of drugs and chemicals used to make heroin.

This year has been the deadliest in four years in Afghanistan, with violence claiming the lives of nearly 1,500 people -- most of them suspected militants involved in clashes with Afghan and US-led forces hunting down insurgents.