KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb 7 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a customs office in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Monday and U.S. troops and Afghans were among the casualties, the provincial police chief said.
NATO-led forces confirmed the attack on the customs compound near the main city in Kandahar province, heartland of the Taliban insurgency, but there was no immediate indication of how many might have been killed or wounded.
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said U.S. service members were present at the time, and that there were casualties, but he could not provide further details.
Kandahar provincial police chief Mohammad Mujahid told Reuters a teenage suicide bomber had blown himself up near a group of U.S. soldiers and Afghan officials. He also said it was not clear how many people had died or were wounded.
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, with civilian and military casualties hitting record levels in 2010.
U.S. and NATO-led forces say they have made significant gains in the violent provinces of Kandahar and Helmand on Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan, but attacks are still frequent and the insurgency appears to be spreading to previously peaceful areas of the north and west.
(Reporting by Ismail Sameem in Kandahar, Hamid Shalizi and Matt Robinson in Kabul; Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Paul Tait and daniel Magnowski)
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