Herat, April 12: Two Indian engineers belonging to the Border Roads Organisation were killed and five of them wounded on Saturday in a suicide blast mear the Minar area in the Nimroz province of Afghanistan. The blast took place when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of Indian road-workers, a Governor said.

The dead victims were identified as M P Singh and C Govindaswamy. And Bishram Oroan, Vikram Singh, Muhammad Nazin Khan, Anil Kumar Thampee and Mayaram were the ones who sustained injuries in the attack, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said.

The wounded have been admitted to a hospital.

Conveying the government`s deepest condolences to the families of the victims, Sarna said that the families of the deceased and wounded were being contacted for immediate disbursement of compensation and insurance.

A report from Herat said a man claiming to be a Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi had said his outfit was behind the attack near the Minar area.

The attack on Indians working in Afghanistan is not surprising, as the past years have witnessed many such incidents of Indian engineers being abducted and killed in the restive country. Every time the demand has been that the Indians should leave for their own country rather than work in Afghanistan.

Nearly 400 BRO personnel are engaged in the construction of a crucial 218-km highway between Zaranj and Delaram in Afghanistan as part of India`s assistance programme for reconstruction of the war-torn country.

The Zaranj-Delaram highway, which is still under construction, will boost Afghanistan`s global connectivity and trade links, something which the Taliban are understandably opposed to it.

The bombing in Nimroz province follows a suicide car bombing in the southern province of Kandahar, which killed eight civilians on Thursday.

The Taliban also carried out a suicide attack at a convoy of Indian construction workers in Nimroz in the first week of January this year, killing two ITBP personnel and injuring four others guarding them.