World

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Afghans pass the scene of a suicide attack as they walk to their house in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

A teenage suicide bomber blew himself up outside NATO headquarters in the Afghan capital on Saturday, killing at least six civilians in a strike that targeted the heart of the U.S.-led military operation in the country, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast, which was the latest in a series of insurgent attacks in the heavily-fortified Afghan capital aimed at undercutting a months-long campaign by the U.S.-led coalition to shore up security in Kabul before a significant withdrawal of combat troops limits American options.

While bombings and shootings elsewhere in Afghanistan often receive relatively little attention, attacks in the capital score propaganda points for the insurgents by throwing doubt on the government's ability to provide security even the seat of its power.

The attacks also aim to undermine coalition claims of improving security ahead of the planned withdrawal of foreign troops by the end of 2014.

The bomber struck just before noon Saturday outside the headquarters of the U.S.-led NATO coalition, on a street that connects the alliance headquarters to the nearby U.S. and Italian embassies, a large U.S. military base and the Afghan Defence Ministry.

The alliance and police said all of the dead were Afghans, and the Ministry of Interior said some were street children. Kabul police said in a statement that the bomber was 14 years old.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the target was a U.S. intelligence facility nearby.

Earlier Saturday, hundreds of Afghans and officials had gathered just a few hundred meters from the site of the attack to lay wreaths at a statue to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the death of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic Northern Alliance commander who was killed in an al-Qaida suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The alliance joined with the United States to help rout the Taliban after America invaded Afghanistan a month later in the wake of the attacks.

___

Patrick Quinn contributed from Kabul.