Kabul, Nov 12 (DPA) Six civilians were killed when a bomb-filled fuel tanker exploded close to the building where the brother of President Hamid Karzai was attending a meeting in the southern province of Kandahar Wednesday, according to government sources.The bomb injured 43 people, but Ahmed Wali Karzai escaped uninjured when the tanker exploded near the place where he was attending a meeting at the office of the provincial council, the BBC reported.

Ahmed Karzai blamed the “cowardly act” on the Taliban.

Only hours earlier in Kandahar, two men on a motorbike threw acid on six Afghan girls and their teacher walking to school, hospitalizing three of the girls with serious burns, government officials said.

ISAF Commander David McKiernan said the attackers were not only “cowards, but liars”. Those who attack innocent women and children, cannot fight for humans, said the general.

President Karzai, attending a UN conference in New York, condemned the suicide bombing and the acid attack as “ruthless act by the enemies of peace and prosperity”.

No group has claimed responsibility for the two attacks in Kandahar, the birthplace of the radical Islamic Taliban.