Suicide bombing in Afghanistan's Herat province

At least nine people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan's western Herat province, reports say. The attack targeted the government headquarters of Guzara district as people queued to see officials, AP quoted a local official as saying. Eyewitnesses saw shattered bodies and mangled metal after the blast. The suicide bomber apparently drove up in a four-wheel-drive vehicle before detonating a cache of explosives. "When a suicide bomber tried to enter the district headquarters, he was stopped by the police but then he detonated his explosives - right at the gate," district head Nasar Ahmad Popul, who was inside the building at the time of the blast, told the AP news agency. Six civilians and three policemen were killed in the attack, police said. Herat province's head of police, Sayed Agha Saqeb, told the AFP news agency that there had been two people in the vehicle, one of them wearing a burka. "One of the bombers is totally shattered and the other person's body is still there with his [suicide] vest still unexploded." Guzara district lies 10km (6 miles) south of the provincial capital, Herat, near the city's airport. Nato handed security control of the city of Herat to Afghan forces in July 2011, ahead of a full combat troop pullout in 2014.