KANDAHAR, July 5: A suicide attacker blew himself up at a police gathering in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing nine people including a boy, while a Nato force soldier died in a separate blast.

The two attacks occurred as a German national and his driver abducted a week ago in the southwest of the country were released, officials said, but the extremist Taliban denied being responsible for their capture.

The suicide attack blew off the ceiling of a room at the highway police command in the southern town of Spin Boldak, near the border with Pakistan, where a lunch was being held to welcome a new district police chief.

“Police were eating lunch when a suicide attacker entered the room and detonated himself,” said police officer Bismullah Khan from the scene.

The highway police commander, Lal Jan, was killed along with his 12-year-old son and seven others, most of them policemen, southern Kandahar provincial, police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib said.

The Spin Boldak district police chief, the area's criminal investigation police head and district attorney were among 11 wounded, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but similar attacks have been carried out by the Taliban movement.

The insurgents did however say they were behind Thursday's bombing that killed a soldier with Nato's International Security Assistance Force in the southeastern province of Paktika.

Two other ISAF soldiers were wounded when a bomb hit their vehicle, the 37-country force said, without releasing the nationalities of the casualties.

In a third attack, a roadside bomb struck a vehicle in northeast Kunar province, leaving dead a woman and two men and wounding two other people, including a nine-month-old baby, police said.

The German foreign ministry said, meanwhile, the freed German national and his translator were handed over to ISAF.

The two men went missing on Thursday while driving on the main highway that links Kandahar city to Herat in the west.

Afghan officials said they were abducted in southwestern Farah province.

The governor of Farah, Ghulam Mohaidin Baloch, said earlier Thursday the abductors, who he said were Taliban, had told elders they would release the German for 40,000 dollars.—AFP