Afghan suicide attack 40 killed, injured : police

KABUL: A suicide bomber ballast in government building in northern Afghanistan Monday, killed 20 people and wounded around 20 more in an attack on a, district officials said.

"Police have withdrawn from at least 20 bodies and the toll could go up further," Abdul Rahman Aqtash, the deputy police chief of northern Kunduz province, told Reuters.

Mohammad Ayoub Haqyar, a government official in the Emam Saheb district of Kunduz, said the bomber hit as people were lining up to collect identity cards inside the local statistics office.

Kunduz has become the center of a growing front in Afghanistan's long-running Taliban insurgency over the past two years, with attacks burning out into neighboring provinces crossways the north.