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KABUL, Afghanistan — A string of bombings and gun battles reported around Afghanistan Saturday killed 41 people and left at least six wounded, including two foreigners hurt in a suicide bombing near the capital.

Insurgent violence is running at its highest level since U.S. forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers, who had harbored al-Qaida leaders following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Most of the violence is concentrated in southern or eastern Afghanistan, where insurgents staged several attacks Saturday, but there have been occasional suicide attacks on Afghan security forces and foreign targets in Kabul.

A suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a convoy of two four-wheel drive Land Cruisers on a main road leading out of the capital Saturday, said Ali Shah Paktaiwal, chief of criminal investigations in the city. Interior Ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary said two foreigners and four Afghans were injured. He said he did not know the nationalities of the foreigners or the extent of their injuries.

In Kandahar province in the south, insurgents attacked a police patrol with a bomb and then opened fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, police officer Umar Khan said. Eight officers were killed and one was missing, he said.

In Ghazni province in the east, police had killed 24 militants, two of whom were believed to be Arabs, over the last 24 hours, local police chief Ali Shah Ahmadzai said. Five insurgents were also killed in Badghis province, in the west, since Friday, a police official there said.

Elsewhere in Kandahar, a roadside bomb killed two Afghans guarding a convoy carrying supplies for NATO-led forces, according to provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib. In neighboring Helmand province, Afghan soldiers shot and killed two suspected Taliban fighters planting a roadside bomb, said police officer Ghulam Wali.

Twin bombings kill at least 37 in southern

Indian city beset by Hindu-Muslim tensions

HYDERABAD, India — A pair of bombings minutes apart tore through a popular family restaurant and an outdoor arena on Saturday night, killing at least 37 people in this southern Indian city plagued by Hindu-Muslim tensions.

The restaurant was destroyed by the bomb placed at the entrance. Blood-covered tin plates and broken glasses littered the road outside. The other blast struck a laser show at an auditorium in Lumbini park, leaving pools of blood and dead bodies between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel. Some seats were hurled 100 feet away.

"We heard the blast and people started running out past us. Many of them had blood streaming off them,” said P.K. Verghese, the security manager at the laser show. "It was complete chaos. We had to remove the security barriers so people could get out.”

Most of the dead were killed in the Gokul Chat restaurant at Hyderabad’s Kothi market, said K. Jana Reddy, the state home minister. Some 50 people were injured in the two blasts.

While Indian officials often blame Muslim militants for bomb attacks, there were no immediate accusations against Islamic groups in the blasts. The two spots are popular with both Hindus and Muslims.

Hindu-Muslim animosity runs deep in Hyderabad, where a bombing at a historic mosque killed 11 people in May. Another five people died in subsequent clashes between security forces and Muslim protesters angered by what they said was a lack of police protection.

Two other bombs were defused in the city Saturday, one under a footbridge in the busy Bilsukh Nagar commercial area, and another in a movie theater in the Narayanguba neighborhood, a police official said. Late-night movie showings were canceled across the city.

"This is a terrorist act,” said Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister for Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located.

Much of India’s Hindu-Muslim animosity is rooted in disputes over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, divided between India and mostly Muslim Pakistan but claimed in its entirety by both countries. More than a dozen Islamic insurgent groups are fighting for Kashmir’s independence or its merger with Pakistan.

More than 80 percent of India’s 1.1 billion people are Hindu and 13 percent are Muslim. But in Hyderabad, Muslims make up 40 percent of the population of 7 million.

There has been little progress in the investigation into the May mosque bombing. Underlying the divide, Muslim leaders have said they do not trust local police to handle the investigation into the attack.

A series of terrorist bombings have ripped across India in the past two years. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people, attacks blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.