One soldier dead and 6 wounded in Afghan suicide blast

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed one foreign soldier and wounded six other people, including three civilians, in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar on Saturday, the provincial governor said.

The Taliban have vowed to step up their campaign of suicide bombings this year, after carrying out 140 such attacks in 2007 which killed 200 civilians.

The suicide car bomber rammed his car into a moving military convoy in the city of Jalalabad before detonating explosives, Gol Agha Shirzai, governor of Nangarhar province, said.

One coalition soldier was killed and three wounded, he said.

Three civilians were also wounded in the attack.

The nationalities of the dead and wounded soldiers are not known but most stationed in Nangarhar are American.

The al Qaeda-backed Taliban largely rely on suicide attacks and roadside bomb blasts as part of their insurgency against the pro-Western Afghan government and the more than 60,000 foreign troops in the country.

In another incident, Mohammad Younus, the governor of Qalat District in Zabul Province, was shot dead with his bodyguard at his house on Friday night by unknown gunmen, provincial police chief, Jalal Mohammad Yaqub, told Reuters.

The Taliban have killed dozens of government officials to try to undermine the faith of Afghans in the ability of their government to provide security in the country.

On Saturday, a senior member of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) was kidnapped along with three companions by Taliban fighters in Wardak province, west of Kabul, a local government official said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, confirmed they were holding the four men.

The NRC was established by the government to persuade militants to lay down their arms and join peace efforts.

(Reporting by Mohammad Rafiq and Shir Ahmad in Ghazni and Mirwais Afghan in Kandahar; Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)