Al-Qaeda is getting busier in Afghanistan. Today, they claimed responsibility for an attack that apeared to be targeted at Canadian soldiers but, as usual, the terrorists ended up killing civilians.

The governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, called the attack a cataclysm for the Afghan people. The blast wounded three or four Canadian soldiers, part of the NATO security force in Afghanistan, but the brunt of the explosion was borne by civilians, mainly street vendors and people selling fruit from pushcarts beside the road, he said. Several shops caught fire in the town,

Spinbaldak, which is 60 miles southeast of Kandahar and is the main border crossing to Pakistan, Mr. Khaled said. A day before the attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a dogfighting event in a district just north of the city of Kandahar. The death toll from that attack has risen to 100,

Mr. Khaled said. Among the dead were 36 local police officers, part of an auxiliary force being trained to help keep the peace in their district.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack. Mr. Ahmadi said the bomber was named Abdul Rahman and was from Kandahar Province. He denied that the attack had wounded or killed any civilians.