Suicide bomber kills 22 people and intelligence deputy in Laghman's provincial capital Mihtarlam

AFGHANISTAN - A Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing the deputy head of Afghan intelligence and more than 20 other people, officials said.

High-ranking officials were killed and dozens of people wounded when the bomber detonated his explosives in a crowd of people outside the main mosque in Laghman's provincial capital Mihtarlam, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said the deputy chief of Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, Abdullah Laghmani, was the target.

"Abdullah Laghmani is among the dead," provincial governor Lutfullah Mashal told a news conference in Mihtarlam, capital of the relatively peaceful Laghman province, where a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque.

The attack killed 22 people, including 18 civilians and four government officials -- Laghmani, the head of the provincial council, the provincial chief executive and the provincial government's former head of religious affairs.

"Eighteen civilians were killed. Three were women," Mashal said.

A Reuters witness in the provincial capital, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Kabul, saw a pick-up truck carrying wounded people covered in blood. Eight ambulances left the scene, headed toward Jalalabad, the nearest big city.

The assassination of such a high-profile member of the Western-backed Afghan security services, which have been on the frontline of an increasingly deadly Taliban insurgency, shocked the country just weeks after key elections.

The attack in the relatively peaceful eastern province of Laghman was the second high-profile bombing in Afghanistan since the Aug. 20 presidential and provincial council elections, held under a cloud of Taliban intimidation.

Women and children among dead

An official at the Afghan health ministry initially confirmed that at least 10 bodies had been brought into hospitals with 36 people wounded, but warned that the death toll was likely to rise with bodies taken elsewhere.

"There are women and children among the wounded as well," said Doctor Ahmad Farid Raaid.

The provincial government spokesman said the bomber blew himself up as people were leaving the mosque following a meeting about boosting community participation in counter-narcotics and security efforts.

A doctor at the main government hospital in Jalalabad in neighboring Nangarhar province said the head of the Laghman provincial council was brought in badly wounded after the explosion but died on the operating table.

On Aug. 25, a massive truck bomb exploded in Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan, killing more than 40 people in the biggest militant attack in the country for more than a year.

The attack highlighted the massive problems facing Afghanistan as senior representatives of the United States and Europe gathered in Paris to discuss their response to the elections and allegations of mass fraud.

Western powers hope to use the one-day meeting to chart a post-election course in Afghanistan taking account of a strategic shift in the eight-year war with Taliban-linked insurgents.

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke will join counterparts from Britain, France, Germany and the United Nations as partial results from the elections show President Hamid Karzai with a narrow lead.