KANDAHAR, Sept 7: Two Taliban suicide bombers blew themselves up at Kandahar police headquarters in southern Afghanistan Sunday, leaving at least two people dead and dozens wounded, officials said.

The blasts were a minute apart and could be heard across the city, a one-time stronghold of the extremist movement which immediately claimed responsibility.

Authorities scrambled to assess the damage with initial accounts saying eight people were dead. Police and a government spokesman later said two policemen were killed and nearly 40 people were wounded.

“I’ve lost two police and eight other of my policemen have been wounded,” General Abdul Raziq, police chief for the southern border with Pakistan, told AFP.

He said he had been about 10 metres from one of the explosions and had been slightly wounded.

“There are more casualties, more people dead, including civilians,” Raziq said.

But provincial government spokesman Najeebullah Parwaiz said the two policemen were the only people killed.

“Thirty-eight people are wounded, among them eight civilians, and the rest of them police including one policewoman,” he added.

“The first suicide attacker detonated outside the building and one minute later the second suicide attacker detonated on the stairs between the first floor and second,” he said.

Provincial council chief Ahmad Wali Karzai told AFP soon after the explosions that eight people were killed and two dozen hurt.

A spokesman for Al Qaeda-linked Taliban told AFP by telephone that his militia was responsible for the blast.

The rebels have carried out scores of suicide bombings as part of a growing insurgency launched soon after they were removed from government in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

In one of the most audacious attacks, the Taliban used suicide bombers to blow open the Kandahar jail in mid-June, enabling more than 1,000 prisoners -- about half of them militants -- to escape.

The rebels also claimed responsibility for another suicide bombing on Sunday.

It was targeted at Nato-led troops, apparently Italians, driving through the western city of Herat but caused little damage, police said.

“Only the attacker was killed and there were no casualties to civilians,”Herat police spokesman Noor Khan Nikzad told AFP.

“He detonated near the Italian vehicles,” he said. The blast damaged one of the vehicles, he added, unable to comment about any possible casualties to the foreign soldiers.

The Italian military in the city and Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), under which about 2,500 Italian soldiers serve, did not immediately comment.

A day earlier a Taliban suicide bomber disguised as a beggar killed six people, including two state attorneys, and destroyed a government building in the southwestern town of Zaranj, on the border with Iran.—AFP