KANDAHAR: Fifteen policemen and an intelligence agent died Saturday in a string of devastating attacks in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar which the Taliban said it committed.

The attacks, which played out over several hours and left 45 people injured, involved several suicide bombers armed with guns and grenades firing on the main police headquarters after occupying a wedding hall opposite.

Three car bombs were also detonated near the police office and a further three were defused before they could go off, officials said.

The carnage came despite an influx of international troops into the province last year in an operation bidding to clear the traditional Taliban stronghold, seen as one of the key battlegrounds in the ten-year Afghanistan war.

It was swiftly condemned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai “in the strongest possible terms”.

There was “no indication” that any foreign troops had been killed or injured in the violence, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Local officials told reporters that 23 local people including nine children had been wounded in the attacks, although they did not have details of any deaths.

“Fifteen people were killed and 45 others suffered injuries and some of the wounded are in critical condition,” Kandahar provincial governor Tooryalai Wesa told reporters.

He later clarified that the 15 were all police, and that an agent from the National Directorate of Security (NDS) had also been killed, adding that the fighting had stopped.

A local police commander, General Salem Ehsas, said the attackers “parked six explosive-laden vehicles near police HQ —they detonated three but security forces defused the explosives placed in the others”.

Amid conflicting claims over details of what happened, a spokesman for the Taliban, Yousuf Ahmadi, said the group was behind the attack.

“We sent six men to the building, they attacked police HQ and blew themselves up,” he said. “We also detonated six explosive-packed cars outside the police headquarters.”

As the violence raged, frightened locals hid inside their homes in a bid to escape injury or death.

An AFP reporter at the chaotic scene saw attackers firing rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifles and machine guns from the sixth floor of the wedding hall at the police headquarters.

He later said that police had entered the building and there had been two loud explosions.

Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan, is a Taliban heartland hit by frequent instability despite a large foreign troop presence due to a major operation against militants in the province in recent months.