KANDAHAR--A series of explosions in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Saturday has killed at least 27 people and injured another 52, the province's senior health official told AFP.

"We have now received 27 bodies and there are at least 52 people wounded, all figures include civilians and policemen," said Abdul Qayoom Pukhla, Kandahar public health director.

Local television appealed for all health workers in the city to immediately report for duty.

It also called on all residents of Kandahar, Afghanistan's third biggest city, who were able to donate blood to report to health centers to do so.

"We are in urgent need," an announcement said.

The explosions began around 8:00 pm (1530 GMT), interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashery told AFP earlier.

A police officer with the provincial police headquarters, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been a total of five blasts at different locations around the city.

"There were five suicide attacks using bicycles and motorbikes in Kandahar city," he said.

"One happened close to the provincial prison, the second one next to the Red Mosque," which is near the home of President Hamid Karzai's brother Wali Karzai, the elected leader of the Kandahar provincial Council, he said.

Another attack took place close to provincial police headquarters, another near the home of Gul Agha Shairzai, former Kandahar provincial governor and now governor of Nangahar province, the police officer said.

An AFP reporter in the city said windows in buildings across a large area of the city had been shattered by the force of the blasts.

Kandahar is Afghanistan's third city after Kabul and Herat and was the spiritual capital of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until their overthrow in the 2001 US-led invasion.

Remnants of the movement have regrouped to wage an increasingly deadly insurgency, which last year killed more than 500 foreign soldiers.

Around 121,000 US and NATO soldiers are based in Afghanistan fighting the insurgents, with another 30,000 due to be deployed, mostly to the south, by August as part of a major new strategy designed to end the war.

A huge military campaign is under way in neighboring Helmand province, aimed at driving out Taliban militants who run some regions in tandem with drug traffickers.

The southern provinces are the source of most of the world's heroin in an illicit industry worth up to three billion dollars a year, which funds the insurgency and has transformed Afghanistan into a narco-state.

Afghan, US and NATO leaders have made clear that Kandahar is also slated for military operations that will pave the way for civilian control as part of the counter-insurgency strategy.