Kabul - One Afghan civilian was killed and nine others, including police officers, were wounded in two suicide attacks and a roadside bomb blast in a town in south-eastern Afghanistan, officials said Monday.

A suicide bomber driving a explosive-filled vehicle attacked a NATO-led US military base in Khost city, the capital for the province of the same name, on Sunday, but caused no casualties among the troops, a NATO spokesman in Kabul said.

The Afghan interior ministry said that the blast killed one Afghan civilian and wounded six others.

The second suicide bomber, who had strapped explosives around his body, was waiting for police and emergency officials at the site of the first attack, but was identified by the police, the statement said, adding that the bomber detonated himself prematurely and was the only victim in the blast.

Three others, including two policemen, were wounded when a bomb was remotely detonated in the same Khost city on Sunday morning, a local police official said.

Khost has a long border with neighboring Pakistan, where Taliban militants are believed to have rear bases and often cross the border into Afghanistan to stage attacks on Afghan and US troops, stationed in the region under the banner of NATO-led international forces.

Taliban militants and their associates in the Haqqani network are active in the province. Afghan government and US military officials are planning to arm local tribesmen in the province and its surrounding areas to clamp down on militant activities in the region.

The move to form local militia groups yielded result in Iraq, where the newly armed Suni fighters helped US and Iraqi armed forces to contain insurgency in that country, but many Afghans fear that the move would not be effective for Afghanistan.

Several private militia groups fought each other in early 1990s over power following the fall of communist-backed regime and plunged Afghanistan into a bloody civil war that resulted in the death of tens of thousands of civilians. (dpa)