Afghan Governor has narrow escape

Kandahar,(Afghanistan): A suicide bomber tried to kill the Governor of a southern Afghanistan province on Monday but blew himself up instead.

The suicide attacker blew up a stack of explosives as Helmand Governor, Sher Mohammad, left his vehicle to enter his office in the provincial Capital Lashkar Gah. However the governer escaped unharmed while the bomber lost both his arms and legs.

?The attacker, who is claimed to be a foreign national has been badly injured and is in coma at the hospital," Interior Ministry Spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said.

Helmand is one of several provinces in southern Afghanistan that sees regular attacks as part of an insurgency against the government being waged mainly by loyalists of the Taliban regime that was ousted in a US-led campaign in 2001.

This year has been the worst for insurgency-linked violence since the fall of the Taliban, with about 1,400 people killed, most of them militants.