Afghan suicide bomber kills 1

A suicide attacker exploded his car Monday next to a U.S. Embassy convoy here, killing an Afghan teenager and wounding five embassy security personnel.

The suicide blast, the first in Kabul since December, propelled one of the armored SUVs in the convoy across Jalalabad Road, which sees more bombings and rocket attacks than any other place in the capital.

Two other U.S. vehicles were also damaged, and flames shot through the wreckage of the bomber’s car.

A 15-year-old Afghan on the side of the road died, said Hasib Arian, district police chief.

One of the injured security personnel was hurt seriously, said Col. Tom Collins, spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force. The U.S. ambassador, Ronald E. Neumann, was not in the convoy, embassy spokesman Joe Mellott said.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a caller who said he spoke for the Taliban, said a Taliban militant from Khowst province had carried out the attack.

Meanwhile, in Helmand province, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a reporter for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, was released by the Taliban after two weeks in captivity.

In an interview with Italy’s RAI Tg3 News, Mastrogiacomo said he saw his captors cut off the head of one of the two Afghans kidnapped with him and thought he would be the next to die.

The fate of the second Afghan abductee was not immediately known.

The journalist arrived Monday at a hospital in Lashkar Gah, in southern Afghanistan, where the Italian-led aid group Emergency is based, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said.

“He is in good health, and I expect that in a few days, we will be able to hug him,” Prodi said.