No coalition troops were reported hurt in the explosion, which was not believed to be an attack on the Bagram Air Base

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, September 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least six people were killed Friday, September 19, in two blasts at a house owned by an explosives trader next to the U.S.-led coalition's Afghanistan headquarters at Bagram Air Base, witnesses said.

No coalition troops were reported hurt in the explosion, which was not believed to be an attack on the base, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

An AFP correspondent saw five bodies, including those of a woman and a child, and two wounded people carried from the blazing home in the village next to the gate of Bagram Air Base, 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of Kabul.

A 14-year-old boy in an alley near the house was killed by shrapnel when a rocket exploded after the main blast. Villagers said another six to 10 people were injured in the second explosion.

A trader was storing mortars and rockets inside the house which exploded around 1:00 pm (0830 GMT), according to residents. It was unclear how he was able to keep so many munitions close to the tightly-guarded military base.

Afghanistan is awash with weapons after two decades of war. Explosives and munitions stores are often set off by power short circuits and other accidents.

"People initially told us that 15 people were living in the house but they now say there were six people living there," U.S. Major David Long told AFP at the scene.

Villagers also said six people -- the owner, his wife and four children -- lived in the house, and that a seventh had been staying there as a guest.

Long said it would take some time to determine the exact toll.

The house was virtually destroyed in the explosion. Neighboring homes were badly damaged.

"There are still bodies lying on the ground and people inside but we can't go to rescue them," said Abdul Rahman, a villager who lives near the destroyed house.

Five fire trucks were dispatched from Bagram Air Base to extinguish the blaze. Dozens of U.S. soldiers, several ambulances and two military vehicles were at the scene as troops kept people away from the house.

Villagers said more explosives were stored in the house, which U.S. troops were trying to remove.

"The owner of the house was buying rockets and bombs and then he removed the explosives and sold them to people mining for precious stones in Badakhshan province and the Panjshir valley," villager Jan Mohammad told AFP.

Mohammad said the owner had lost his left leg and left eye two years ago in an explosion but he had continued his trade.

"It's a good business; he was making a lot of money."

Bagram Air Base is the headquarters of the 12,500-strong U.S.-led coalition hunting Taliban and Al-Qaeda remnants across the central Asian nation.

Escaping Siege

Meanwhile, several dozen Taliban fighters escaped a siege by government troops of a religious school in violence-torn eastern Afghanistan overnight with the help of locals, the provincial police chief said on Friday.

"The local population provided them passage and they managed to flee on Thursday evening," General Daulat Khan, chief of police in Paktika province, told AFP in the provincial capital Sharan.

The heavily-armed fighters had taken shelter in the madrassa (religious school) late on Wednesday after attacking government buildings in the district of Wazakhwa, 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the Pakistani border.

Khan said up to five Taliban commanders had already fled on motorbikes before the siege of the madrassa in the nearby village of Karmadin.

During the siege, local elders clutching copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, had urged the troops not to assault the madrassa, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported on Thursday.

Government troops in Urgun, 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Wazakhwa, were seen seeking instructions from the authorities in Kabul over how to handle the siege.

Paktika, bordering Pakistan, is one of the main battlegrounds in an apparent resurgence by the Taliban and their supporters among the ethnic Pashtun majority, who dominate Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces.

The U.S. military, international aid agencies and Afghan officials have noted an increase in armed attacks on aid workers and troops in recent months.

CARE relief organization said this week that attacks on humanitarian workers had soared to one every two days, from one a month a year ago.

The upsurge in violence has forced aid agencies to abandon rebuilding and development projects in vast swathes of southern and eastern Afghanistan, placing the country's post-war recovery at serious risk.

Norway's International Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson warned on Friday at the end of a visit to Kabul that a lack of aid and development could drive disgruntled Afghans into the arms of insurgents.

"Aid can help people in the way that we can prevent them being recruited to insurgency, to faction fighting and to other insecurity measures," Johnson said.

In the last three weeks U.S. and Afghan troops have killed more than 100 suspected Taliban fighters in a fierce offensive in their mountains hideouts in Zabul province, which borders Paktika.