KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – A suicide attacker detonated himself next to German soldiers shopping in a crowded market in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 10 people and wounding 16, officials said.

Three Germans were killed and two wounded in the attack in the city of Kunduz, said General Noor Mohammad Omarkhail, the deputy police chief for Kunduz province. Seven civilians were killed and 13 wounded, including seven seriously, said Azizullah Safer, the director of the provincial health department. One translator working for the Germans was also wounded.

A statement from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force confirmed that three ISAF soldiers were killed and two wounded in the attack.

The provincial police chief, Gen. Ayub Salangi, said two German vehicles on a security patrol drove into the market area, where soldiers got out on foot to do some shopping.

“They were on a patrol, but they had gotten out of their vehicles with their translator to buy something in the market when the attack happened,” he said.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said a Taliban militant named Mullah Jawad from Baghlan province carried out the attack. The claim could not be independently verified.

Germany’s 3,000 troops here are responsible for northern Afghanistan, which sees relatively few attacks and is considered a much safer region than southern or eastern Afghanistan, where most of the country’s fighting takes place.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to continue with reconstruction efforts in the country following the blast – the worst attack against Germans since a car bomb exploded near a bus carrying German peacekeepers in June 2003, killing four soldiers.
>[?”These perfidious murders fill us all with disgust and horror,” Ms. Merkel said in a statement. “The German military is carrying out an important mission for the reconstruction and stabilization of Afghanistan. It is the goal of the attackers to destroy the established successes of this rebuilding process.”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his “deep sadness” at the loss of life but said the attack showed how important the German mission is.

“The attack again underscores that there is no quiet or safe zone” in Afghanistan, he said in a statement. “The mission that the German military has taken up in the north of the country is a central component of the stabilization of Afghanistan.”

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung broke off a trip to Denmark to return to Berlin when he heard the news, spokesman Thomas Raabe said. Raabe refused to give details of the casualties.

Last month, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a police training field in Kunduz, killing 10 Afghan policemen and wounding 40 others. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that attack.
>[?Elsewhere, militants attacked American-led coalition and Afghan forces northeast of Kabul, sparking a rare gunbattle close to the capital that killed about 20 militants, officials said Saturday.

Afghan and allied forces were on combat patrol late Friday in the al-Asay Valley in Kapisa province, which borders Kabul province when they were ambushed, the American coalition said.

The militants placed roadside bombs along the route in a “failed attempt to trap” coalition forces, a coalition statement said. Fighter aircraft fired on the militants, the statement said.

The coalition said that “several dozen enemy fighters were estimated killed” during the fight and that there were no reports of civilian casualties.

Governor Abdul Satar Murad, the governor of Kapisa province, said about 20 fighters were killed, and he said there were unconfirmed reports of civilian casualties.

While fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan has picked up in recent weeks, battles so close to the capital are considerably rarer.

A joint American-Afghan operation in Kapisa in November was credited with scattering several hundred fighters who had gathered in the region’s steep valleys and mountainous terrain and who threatened the capital, Kabul, and the nearby U.S. base at Bagram. That operation also busted a suicide cell that had launched several attacks in Kabul last fall.

The coalition, meanwhile, said about 20 Taliban fighters ambushed coalition soldiers and Afghan police patrolling near the Pakistan border in the eastern province of Paktia on Friday, sparking an eight-hour battle that killed “a significant number of insurgents.”

Troops called in airstrikes that destroyed “several enemy positions,” the coalition said.

Ghulam Dastageer, the deputy provincial police chief, said the clash killed up to 60 fighters, though the only proof he offered was that officials found 60 abandoned weapons at the battle site.

He said it was possible there were Chechen, Arab and Pakistani fighters among the insurgents.

In eastern Afghanistan, a remote-control bomb exploded next to a police convoy, killing a district police chief and his driver and wounding three policemen in the Achen district of Nangarhar province, said Ghafar Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

The attack happened as police were on their way to eradicate poppies, Mr. Khan said.