Casualties as Taliban blow up Afghan power station

Several people were killed and wounded when Taliban insurgents blew up a power station in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on Saturday, a provincial official said.

The power station in the district of Girishk was the major main source of electricity for people in the area.

"There are casualties but we don't know how many were killed or wounded as we are still busy evacuating people from the rubble," provincial district chief, Abdul Manaf said. "The building was severely damaged in the blast," he said.

A doctor at a hospital in the area said four wounded civilians had been brought in. Taliban militants planted hundreds of roadside bombs and conducted scores of suicide bomb attacks in 2007 in Afghanistan, contributing to a record year of violence that killed 6,000 people, nearly 2,000 of them civilians.

The militants, fighting to expel foreign forces and bring down the Western-backed government, have also attacked infrastructure projects.