A shopkeeper, Razaq Khan, said the blast was ``the biggest explosion I have seen in my life."
``I was shocked. When I opened my eyes, everywhere was smoke and dust. Many people and children were lying in pools of blood, killed and injured," he said outside his damaged shop. Khan escaped injury.
The attack was the second major suicide bombing to kill civilians this month in southern Afghanistan, where insurgents are battling NATO-led troops and Afghan forces trying to extend the weak control of the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Taliban rebels rely on civilians to provide them with shelter and sanctuary during their insurgency against foreign and Afghan troops, particularly in their former southern heartland.
Afghanistan is undergoing its bloodiest period since the US-led ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban has increased its use of suicide attacks this year, borrowing tactics from militants in Iraq. The escalation in the Taliban insurgency has stoked bitter fighting. More than 1,600 people, most militants, have died across Afghanistan in the past four months, according to an Associated Press tally.
Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who says he speaks for the Taliban, said yesterday's bombing was not a suicide attack but a remote-controlled bomb that had targeted a former Lashkar Gah police chief because he had served under the procommunist government during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. The former chief, who runs the market where the blast occurred, and his son were killed.
``We are very sad about the civilian casualties," Ahmadi said in a phone call from an undisclosed location.
