KANDAHAR, Afghanistan ? The United Nations' refugee agency says three of its employees are among the five people killed in a suicide bombing in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
The UNCHR says in a statement that two others were also wounded in the attack early Monday.
Afghan provincial police chief Abdul Razzaq says a suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden pickup truck into a checkpoint near a compound housing U.N. and international aid groups. Three other insurgents then rushed into the compound, sparking an hours-long gun battle with security forces.
All three of the attackers were killed.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) ? A suicide bomber slammed a pickup truck packed with explosives into a checkpoint in a neighborhood housing U.N. and international aid group offices in the southern city of Kandahar on Monday, killing four people including the district police chief, Afghan officials said.
Immediately after the blast, three insurgents rushed into the neighborhood and seized control of at least one building, sparking a gunbattle with Afghan and NATO forces, Kandahar police chief Gen. Abdul Razzaq said. The firefight lasted more than two hours before the militants were shot dead.
The combined bombing and assault was the second major attack in three days to target foreigners or NATO troops in the country, and spotlighted the insurgents' ability to continue to carry out major attacks despite a 10-year NATO campaign against them. The U.S.-led coalition is gradually handing over security responsibilities to its Afghan counterparts and plans to withdraw its combat forces by the end of 2014.
"Despite the insurgency's failures this past year, it remains capable and, enabled by safe havens in Pakistan, continues to contest (Afghan and NATO) progress in some parts of the country," German Brig Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a coalition spokesman in Afghanistan told reporters in Kabul.
But Jacobson also said the coalition and its Afghan partners had made significant gains against the Taliban and that incidents such as the bombing in Kandahar were not indicative of the insurgents strengthening their reach.
"It is not to gain a military victory, it is to gain media" attention he said.
Immediately after the early morning blast, the gunmen seized control of an animal clinic near the office of the International Relief and Development organization, said provincial police spokesman Ghorzang, who like many Afghans goes by one name.
The blast caused extensive damage to the offices of the U.N.'s refugee agency, the UNHCR. Associated Press video footage showed large chunks of the building's outer walls blown out, as well as the windows while the interior was in shambles. The street around the building was strewn with rubble.
The insurgents then managed to enter the IRD's office through the UNHCR building, Ghorzang said.
The Taliban, for whom Kandahar is a traditional stronghold, claimed responsibility for the attack. Spokesman Qari Yousef said the insurgents were targeting what he claimed was a guest house affiliated with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
The UNAMA does not operate a guest house in the area. However, the clinic and IRD offices entered by the attackers are near guest houses affiliated with both the IRD and the UNHCR. The area is also home to several other international NGO offices and guest houses.
Razzaq, the provincial police chief, said that three civilians and the district police chief, Abdul Aziz Khan, were killed and four people wounded.
UNAMA spokesman Dan McNortan said all of the agency's staff, both Afghan and foreign, was accounted for.
The attack comes two days after the Taliban launched a brazen midday suicide bombing in Kabul, striking a NATO convoy on Saturday and killing 17 people, including five NATO service members, one Canadian soldier and eight civilian contractors.
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Associated Press writers Tarek El-Tablawy, Deb Riechmann and Amir Shah contributed.
I'm the sort of person who likes to buy things online. Batteries? Yup. Groceries? You bet. And I just bought a garbage can that opens automatically when you get close to it (magic!). But there's one big area where online shopping has always fallen short: clothes shopping. If you've ever tried ordering a shirt or jeans off the web, then you know the feeling ??the site says it's a medium, but you're not sure if you should move up to the large instead. And then when the shirt actually arrives, you find that it drapes in all the wrong ways and looks vaguely like a poncho. Even when there's free return shipping, it's still a pain to get another size.
The upshot is that Apple, long accused of peddling overly expensive gear, is now in a position where it?s almost impossible for competitors to match Apple?s pricing on similarly-specced tablets. To be sure, some are trying: Motorola has just announced a forthcoming ?Family Edition? of its Xoom tablet for a suggested price of $380?that?s down from the initial $800 price tag on the original Motorola Xoom. And tablets like the Asus Eee Transformer and Acer Iconia have base prices as much as $100 less than an iPad?s starting price. But most competitors have little choice but to either match Apple?s pricing (a la Samsung), stick to smaller form factors (like 7-inch displays) to keep costs down, or dive for the lowest price point possible with purpose-built devices that just happen to run Android (a la the Nook Color).
Android tablets have also suffered from fragmentation of the Android platform and in the Android market. iPads could run the vast majority of iPhone apps when they launched, and similarly Android tablets can theoretically run all kinds of Android apps. But the reality is much messier. Many Android games and apps are restricted to dual-core processors, and sometimes specific chips. Your tablet might be be able to run dual-core apps, but that doesn?t mean that it?ll run titles designed for Nvidia?s Tegra 2 processor. Being on Android alone isn?t enough. Android tablet users have also encountered apps that fail to scale correctly (or even run) on larger screen resolutions, and there?s almost no way to know if an app will cope with a larger screen size until you try it. And that?s leaving aside issues of Android versioning (how many consumers know if they?re running Froyo, Gingerbread, or Honeycomb?) and app support. It?s not unusual for major applications to debut with support for only a small subset of Android devices ? and sometimes (say with Minecraft) that?s all about marketing. When consumers buy an Android tablet, they?re not buying into the whole Android ecosystem: they?re buying into a hazy subset of it, and that?s leaving aside the issue of alternative application stores. The iPad is simpler: one store, and clear indications whether an app is incompatible.
Of course, the problem with relying on purpose-built Android devices like the Nook Color and Kindle Fire to bolster Android is that neither device sees Android as much of a feature. Nook Colors have to be tweaked to become full-fledged Android tablets, and the Kindle Fire basically considers Android?s benefit to buyers as a source for email apps: Android itself is buried under Amazon?s custom interface. But if Android wants to dominate the tablet market and become a ubiquitous platform, specialized products that redefine tablet computing might be the way to go.