(7 Feb 2006) SHOTLIST
1. Wide of police and people at site of explosion
2. Wide of people being moved away from the area
3. Wide of street outside the police headquarters
4. Wide of soldiers arriving in truck convoy
5. Soldiers getting out of trucks
6. Close-up of soldier with machine gun
7. Soldiers standing near the site of the explosion
8. Various of people at the guard post washing away the blood with water
9. SOUNDBITE: (Pashtun) Dr Mamoon Khan, Mirwaise Hospital:
"We have got 12 dead bodies, ten of them were police officers, two were civilian and we have got 13 wounded people, some of them are police officers and some of them are civilian people."
10. Firefighters cleaning the street with water hose
STORYLINE:
A suicide bomber blew up a guard post outside police headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Tuesday.
According to initial reports from officials, 13 people were killed and 11 wounded in the blast, however Dr Mamoon Khan from Kandahar city's Mirwaise Hospital later told AP Television News they had received 12 dead bodies and 13 wounded people.
"We have got 12 dead bodies, ten of them were police officers, two were civilian and we have got 13 wounded people, some of them are police officers and some of them are civilian people," said Khan.
Purported Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammed Yousaf claimed responsibility for the bombing on behalf of the hard-line militia, and threatened more attacks.
Yousaf's claim of responsibility couldn't be independently verified.
He has claimed previous attacks on behalf of the Taliban, but his exact ties to the militia's leadership are unclear.
The attack is the latest in a string of bombings in Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold.
The violence has raised fears for the country's nascent democracy four years after the Taliban were ousted for hosting Osama bin Laden.
The guard post was destroyed, and several cars and motorbikes were wrecked.
The blast went off against the outer wall of the heavily guarded headquarters, but did not penetrate it or the buildings inside.
Afghan and Canadian troops cordoned off the bomb site, which was stained with blood and strewn with police caps, shoes and shredded clothes.
Some police were weeping.
An Associated Press reporter saw three bodies lying on the ground covered in blood and several wounded people being carried away.
Amid the chaos, civilians were struggling to find out about friends and family who'd been inside the headquarters.
Militants have stepped up attacks in the past year, during which more than 1,600 have died.
There have been more than 20 suicide attacks across Afghanistan in the past four months, suggesting militants may be copying methods used by insurgents in Iraq.
Also in the Kandahar province, a time bomb planted on a bicycle a few hundred metres from a checkpoint at Waish on the Pakistan border injured one passer-by and damaged a truck, the district police chief, Abdul Wasai, said.

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