The attacks are believed to have been timed to draw attention away from the main target, the prison. Guards had been reinforced by Canadian troops after a 2008 bombing led to a mass jailbreak. No prisoners escaped yesterday.
"They wanted to keep people busy in the city and break the prison, but the Canadians did a good job," said Wali Karzai, a provincial councillor and the half-brother of Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai.
Kandahar, with 800,000 inhabitants, is one of Afghanistan's largest cities. It was regarded as the Taliban's spiritual home when they ruled Afghanistan during the 1990s.
Nato and Afghan forces are planning an offensive in Kandahar province later this year, a follow-up to a continuing military operation in neighbouring Helmand.
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