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Summary
Thirty people have been killed and more than 50 wounded when a series of Taliban explosions hit the centre of Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar after nightfall. The Taliban say the attacks are a message to NATO commanders.Taliban suicide bombers struck across Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar on Saturday, killing 30 people and wounding scores in a series of strikes the militants called a message to NATO. The city is at the centre of the Taliban's heartland and the next major target for NATO forces this year. Officials said the biggest attack was aimed at the prison on the city's outskirts, apparently an attempt to repeat a jailbreak there two years ago. Provincial council chief Ahmad Wali Karzai, half-brother of President Hamid Karzai, told Reuters 30 people had been killed, many of them women and children at a wedding hall near one of the targets, the police chief's compound. Two other attacks included a bomb in a motorcycle parked near his own home, and a suicide attack by a bomber on a bicycle, he said, adding he believed the other attacks were intended as diversions from the main strike on the prison.
