KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A huge truck bombing in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Tuesday killed tens of people and wounded scores of others, police said.
The Kandahar blast in southern Afghanistan followed the fatal bombing of four U.S. soldiers killed on patrol also in the southern part of the country.
CNN reported nearly 40 were killed and up to 80 wounded when the bomb exploded in front of a Japanese construction company with mainly Pakistani and Afghan workers. Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of the provincial council, said the bomb was in a tanker truck and was so intense it shattered windows in homes half a mile away.
The blast was also near a building housing NDS, the Afghan intelligence agency, CNN said.
The New York Times said the bomb was detonated where international aid agencies and U.S. offices are located, and that the blast was being interpreted as a Taliban attack on foreigners.
The blast shook the entire city, the report said.
The Times put the dead at 31 with 56 wounded, though that number could climb. More people were believed trapped in the rubble.
The bombing struck at just after dusk when Afghans were gathered for the evening meal that breaks the daily Ramadan fast.
Tuesday's killing of the four U.S. soldiers made this year's death toll in Afghanistan the highest for foreign forces since the war began, authorities said.
The soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while "patrolling in one of the most violent areas of Afghanistan," said Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
The soldiers were fighting in southern Afghanistan, but their exact location was not released, CNN reported.
A total of 295 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year, with 63 deaths this month, the BBC reported. A total of 294 foreign forces died in Afghanistan last year -- the previous deadliest year since the war began in 2001, The New York Times reported.
