KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – A roadside bomb killed four U.S. troops passing by in an armored vehicle in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, the deadliest attack on coalition forces in a month.

In Kabul, a suicide bombing Sunday killed two people and narrowly missed the chief of Afghanistan’s upper house of parliament, and he accused Pakistani intelligence of trying to assassinate him.

The two bombings were the latest in a series of militant attacks that appear to be gathering intensity four years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime by a U.S.-led invasion.

The four American troops died while patrolling in the Pech Valley in Kunar province, military spokesman Col. Jim Yonts said. Kunar Gov. Asadullah Wafa said the roadside blast went off as a convoy of six American vehicles passed.

Yonts said attacks would not deter the U.S.-led coalition from their mission of defeating Taliban and al-Qaida militants and establishing lasting security.

Sunday’s bombing raised the death toll of U.S. military personnel in the region to 220 since a U.S.-led offensive toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001. It was the deadliest attack since Feb. 13, when a roadside bomb killed four American troops in central Uruzgan province.

Also Sunday, a car bombing in the capital targeted Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, a Muslim cleric who briefly served as president in 1992. He now heads the upper house of parliament and leads a commission encouraging Taliban fighters to reconcile with the government.

Mujaddedi escaped with burns to his hands and face but two bystanders, a girl on her way to school and a man on a motorbike, were killed. Two attackers who drove the explosives-laden station wagon into the convoy also died.

“The explosion was very strong. For a while I couldn’t see anything. I was in the front seat of my car. I saw a big fire came toward me,” the white-bearded Mujaddedi told a news conference a few hours later.

His hands were wrapped in bandages – burned when he raised them to protect his face from the blast.

The bloodstained road was littered with parts of the attackers’ car.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing as “an attack on the voice of Afghanistan and clerics of Afghanistan.” He did not blame anyone outright but said he had received information two months ago of a plot to “attack important personalities in Afghanistan.”

Mujaddedi directly accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency for the bombing. He offered no proof.

“We have got information that ISI of Pakistan has launched a plan to kill me,” he said.

Islamabad dismissed Mujaddedi’s charge.

“Pakistan rejects the baseless allegations,” Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.

The accusation likely will aggravate deteriorating relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, two key allies in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism.

Ties have been badly strained since Kabul revealed it had shared intelligence with Islamabad that Taliban leader Mullah Omar and top associates were hiding in Pakistan, and terrorist training camps on Pakistani soil were churning out suicide attackers.

Pakistan dismissed the intelligence as outdated and strongly criticized Afghanistan for publicizing it.

Pakistani intelligence agencies helped create the Taliban militia in the mid-1990s. Islamabad renounced its ties with the hard-line regime in late 2001, just before the United States attacked to oust the Taliban for hosting al-Qaida leaders who plotted the Sept. 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, the governor of the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar confirmed that four Albanian and four Afghan employees of a German company that treats water supplies at U.S. and Afghan army bases had been kidnapped Saturday in neighboring Helmand province. He did not identify the kidnappers.

Qari Mohammed Yousaf, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said in an earlier call to The Associated Press that the militia was responsible but had yet to issue any demands. He said the eight men were in good condition.

Yousaf often calls media to claim responsibility for militia attacks but his exact ties to the Taliban leadership are unclear.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a surprise visit Sunday to Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold where Canada has based some 2,200 troops and taken over security from U.S. forces.

Harper said he wants to show support for the soldiers, aid workers and diplomats conducting what he considers Canada’s most important foreign mission in decades.

“We’re all touched by the threats of terror and this country, as we all know, has been the bastion of that and is still a threat,” said Harper, who spent Sunday night at the air base.

Elsewhere in neighboring Helmand, two separate roadside explosions Sunday killed two civilians and a policeman, deputy provincial Gov. Amir Mohammed Akhunzada said.

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Associated Press reporter Noor Khan in Kandahar, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

AP-ES-03-12-06 1919EST

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