Afghanistan suicide attack kills 21 and injures scores

A suicide car bomb killed 21 people in a packed marketplace in eastern Afghanistan yesterday and wounded at least 74 more. A US soldier and a 13-year-old boy were among the dead.

British officials also revealed that two Royal Marines were killed in Helmand on Wednesday when an explosion hit their reconnaissance patrol near the hotspot town of Garmsir. A third commando and an Afghan interpreter were seriously injured by the blast, which tore through their Jackal, an open-top armoured vehicle.

Officials at the British headquarters in Lashkar Gah said the injured men had been airlifted to Camp Bastion for treatment. The fatalities bring the British death toll in Afghanistan to 124 since 2001 and the combined total of deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq to 300.

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Yesterday's marketplace explosion took place as the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, met Gordon Brown in London for urgent talks on how to reverse the spread of Taliban-led insurgency. Witnesses said the bomber crashed a Toyota Corolla into a US patrol as it rolled through a bazaar close to the Pakistani border.

The spokesman for British forces in Afghanistan, Commander Paula Rowe, said of the latest British fatalities: "This is a tragic blow to us all in the task force, but our loss is nothing compared to that of their families and loved ones. Our thoughts and prayers are with them at this terrible time."

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Its spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said insurgents had detonated a remote-controlled bomb. "Our fighters had been waiting for two days for a patrol to drive past."

More than 3,000 US Marines fought the Taliban out of Garmsir last summer, but the Americans have since withdrawn, leaving a handful of British troops to hold what is effectively Helmand's southern frontier.

Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, the spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force, said: "Our deepest sympathies go out to their family, friends and fellow soldiers. Their lives are irreplaceable to all of us who fight for the peace and stability of Afghanistan." The soldiers' next of kin have been informed.

Mr Karzai briefed Mr Brown on secret talks with Taliban representatives in Saudi Arabia, which could act as a precursor to formal negotiations. Mr Karzai was also expected to press the case for more troops to quell the insurgency, so that Kabul can start negotiations from a position of strength.

Yesterday's attack in Nangahar province followed an acid attack against school girls in Kandahar city on Wednesday. Masked men on motorbikes drove up to the girls as they walked to school. Witnesses said they pulled off the girls' headscarves and splashed acid in their faces to disfigure them and discourage other young women from going to school. Under the Taliban, girls were forbidden from receiving education.

A poll commissioned by BBC4 has found that 68 per cent of the British public believe that British troops should be pulled out of Afghanistan next year.

However the Ministry of Defence stated that its most recent Mori poll showed that 50 per cent of the public supported the British presence and a survey by the think-tank Chatham House found that less than 37 per cent wanted an immediate pull-out.