Suicide attack kills 1 outside CIA base in southeastern Afghanistan

Afghan suicide attack kills 1 outside CIA base

KABUL — A suicide attack outside a CIA base killed one civilian and wounded two security guards Monday in eastern Afghanistan, an Afghan official said.

The blast happened outside Camp Chapman, the same base that was hit in December in one of the worst attacks in the history of the U.S. intelligence agency, said Mubarez Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The base is in Khost province, a dangerous region southeast of the capital.

The suicide bomber was in a car packed with explosives, the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement. The victims were all Afghans, the ministry said.

“The explosion was very strong and thick smoke covered the sky afterward,” said Wali Mohammad, 17, who was working at a construction site nearby.

The Taliban claimed responsibility soon after the attack.

In December, seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his cache of explosives at Camp Chapman.

The CIA had cultivated the bomber — a Jordanian doctor identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi — in hopes of obtaining information about al-Qaida’s second in command. Al-Balawi turned out to be a double-agent.

Also Monday, a rocket attack on a school in Ghazni wounded a teacher and three students, the Interior Ministry said.