KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Al-Qaida and other militants have smuggled explosives, weapons and millions of dollars in cash into Afghanistan for a resurgent terror campaign, the country’s defense minister warned on Wednesday.

His comments came after an unprecedented spate of suicide assaults – the latest on Wednesday when a bomber attacked a U.S. military convoy in the southern city of Kandahar, killing three civilians.

Intelligence indicates that a number of Arabs and other foreigners have entered Afghanistan to launch suicide attacks, Abdul Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.

Besides explosives, the weapons smuggled into Afghanistan include remote-controlled timing devices and other computerized detonators for bombs, he said. He declined to give a specific amount of smuggled money, but said it was in the millions of dollars.

“There has been … more money and more weapons flowing into their hands in recent months,” Wardak said. “We see similarities between the type of attacks here and in Iraq.”

He said al-Qaida militants were increasingly teaming up with local rebels from the ousted Taliban movement to undermine President Hamid Karzai’s U.S.-backed government because they have realize their influence is waning as the country.

“There is no doubt that there is a connection between Taliban and al-Qaida and some other fundamentalists,” he said. “In most cases, the suicide bombers are foreigners … from the Middle East, from neighboring countries. … It is a new trend.”

It has long been believed that the Taliban and al-Qaida maintained ties after U.S.-led forces ousted the regime in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. But the recent bombings, and Wardak’s comments, reinforce fears that they’ve merged some of their forces.

Until two months ago, suicide bombings had been relatively rare in Afghanistan, with only a few reported in the past year, unlike in Iraq.

But nine such assaults have occurred nationwide starting on Sept. 28, when a uniformed man on a motorbike detonated a bomb outside an Afghan army training center where soldiers were waiting to take buses home, killing nine people.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the intelligence, said 22 would-be suicide bombers are believed to be in Afghanistan waiting for orders to attack.

In the latest assault Wednesday, a militant rammed a car laden with explosives into a U.S. military convoy in the southern city of Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold.

No one in the convoy was wounded, but the blast in the city center killed three civilians and wounded four others, government spokesman Mohammed Nasiem Khan said.

In other violence, a police truck ran over a mine in eastern Paktika province Tuesday, killing four cadets and an officer, Gov. Mohammed Gulad Mungle said. He said militants were believed to have recently laid the mine.

On Monday, suspected Arab militants crashed two explosive-filled cars into NATO peacekeepers in the capital, Kabul, killing a German soldier and eight Afghans.

Though the Taliban claimed responsibility, the police blamed al-Qaida, saying the terror group was the only organization able to carry out such a coordinated assault.

A Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, Mullah Ahmadullah Jan, told the AP this week that several Arab fighters with links to al-Qaida have joined the ranks of the rebels recently.

“We are ready to carry out several more suicide attacks,” a purported rebel spokesman, Bin Mohammed, said by satellite phone Wednesday. “We will wage a jihad against all foreigners in our country.”

The surge in suicide bombings comes amid the deadliest year of militant violence in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban regime, with about 1,500 people killed. At least 87 U.S. military personnel also have been killed or died in accidents this year.

Asked about media reports that some insurgents from Iraq have come to Afghanistan to teach militants new tactics, Wardak said it was only speculation and no evidence had been found to support it.

And he said some of the apparent suicide attackers were duped into carrying explosives. “There have been some cases where people have been used without knowing that they are being fixed with explosives,” Wardak said.

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