A rocket exploded outside the residence of the Canadian ambassador in the Afghan capital today, wounding a guard, while a second damaged a government building, police said. The pre-dawn attacks came hours before a visit by US Secretary for State Condoleezza Rice to the capital for talks with President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials. The residence is tucked away behind a heavily fortified street of the diplomatic enclave, about 1km from the presidential palace, the US embassy and headquarters for the NATO-led peacekeeping mission.The second rocket landed inside an intelligence department office not far from the palace, police said. No one was wounded but that it had caused some damage, they said. Residents said another rocket had hit elsewhere in the city, but this could not be immediately confirmed.
"Thank God the rockets did not come during the day time, otherwise it would have caused lots of deaths," a senior city police told Reuters.
It was not immediately clear who fired the rockets, but a policeman guarding the site of the attack outside the residence blamed Taliban guerillas. No Taliban member could be immediately reached for comment.
Kabul has come under a series of rocket attacks since US-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001 but they have not caused any serious damage or casualties. The attack is the latest in a spate of violence by militants in the country, mostly in the south and east, in which dozens of people have been killed after last month's presidential and parliamentary polls. The violence included five suicide attacks, one in the capital that killed more than 10 national army officers two weeks ago, and four in less than a week in the southern city of Kandahar where four British government officers were wounded. Eighteen national police were killed in adjacent Helmand province on Monday.