12 people were killed on Wednesday as a suicide attack targeted foreign military forces in northern Afghanistan.

12 people were killed on Wednesday as a suicide attack targeted foreign military forces in northern Afghanistan.

There were conflicting reports about the exact death toll and the identity of the victims of the blast.

"A suicide bomber targeted a group of foreign friends" near a park in Maymana, the capital of Faryab province, which borders Turkmenistan, provincial governor Abdul Haq Shafaq told Agence France Press.
"They were military. There are casualties, dead and wounded."

NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said two service members died after an explosion in northern Afghanistan, but refused to confirm whether it was the same incident.

Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, described the blast as "powerful" and said six civilians and four policemen were killed, with 20 people wounded including four police.

"A suicide bomber with a suicide vest full of explosives and on a explosive-laden motorcycle targeted some foreign forces near a UN compound in Maymana," he said.

Most foreign troops in Faryab are Norwegian and Lieutenant Colonel John Espen Lien, a spokesman for Norway's armed forces, said there were "at least 12 killed, but this number is not definitive".
No Norwegian ISAF personnel were nearby at the time, he added.

Earlier, provincial police Chief Abdul Khaliq Aqasai said that US troops had told him four of their personnel had also died.