Taliban suicide bombers killed an Afghan soldier and wounded 28 people on Saturday in an assault on the police headquarters in the main city in southern Kandahar province, the focus of a NATO offensive against insurgents.

In what appeared to be an attempt to raid the provincial police headquarters in downtown Kandahar, insurgents detonated a car bomb just outside the building before two suicide bombers blew themselves up on the street, the NATO-led coalition said.

A third militant wearing a suicide vest was shot and wounded in a nearby wedding hall before he could detonate his explosives, said Lieutenant Colonel Webster Wright, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

That militant was taken into custody.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, evidence that the insurgency remains a potent force in an area the U.S. military says has seen significant security gains since a NATO offensive to push back insurgents late last year.

The Kandahar governor's office said one Afghan soldier was killed in the attack, which lasted several hours, and two Afghan police officers and 26 civilians were wounded.

NATO and Afghan troops responded to the assault and were securing the area as the gunfire that echoed across the centre of the city died down, Lt. Col. Wright said.

Taliban spokesman Quri Yousuf Ahmadi, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, told Reuters: "Taliban fighters have inflicted casualties on the police."

Kandahar province is the spiritual homeland of a tenacious Taliban insurgency now in its tenth year, and key to U.S. military efforts to turn the tide of the war as Washington looks to start withdrawing some of its 100,000 troops this year.

Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban government in 2001.

NATO soldiers, Afghan troops and civilians are dying at record levels as the insurgency spreads from traditional strongholds in the south to previously peaceful areas of the north and west.

U.S. forces say they have made progress in securing parts of southern Afghanistan such as Kandahar, but the province and neighbouring Helmand remain the most dangerous for coalition troops.

Tens of thousands of foreign and Afghan troops have run "clearing" operations in some of the country's most volatile districts around Kandahar City, while Afghan police, mentored by foreign trainers, formed security perimeters inside the city.

But while the city has seen a drop in large-scale attacks over the past year, militants have stepped up a campaign of targeted killings, particularly against government figures, hampering efforts to extend the rule of the central government.

Last month, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed Kandahar's deputy governor as he left his home.

Source - Yahoo.