HIGHLIGHTS: 15 Soldiers on Duty at Depot Missing||Qaeda Rocket May Have Triggered off the Chain of Explosions||Wires, Explosives & a Rocket Found Under Car in Kabul|| STORY: At least 19 Afghan soldiers and civilians were killed when an ammunition dump blew up on Friday, unleashing a chain of explosions that spread damage across a wide area, witnesses and officials said.

A further 15 soldiers who were on duty at the depot on the outskirts of the town of Spin Boldak in southern Afghanistan were missing, a senior local official, Syed Fazaluddin Agha, said. (Read map caption)

Agha and other officials said a rocket fired by al Qaeda fugitives had hit the depot in the town, near the border with Pakistan, but another said it was too early to say what caused the blast.

The roar of exploding ammunition could be heard 12 miles away in the Pakistan frontier town of Chaman, where Afghans arriving from Spin Boldak said the blast had destroyed the roofs of houses for one mile around the site.

Agha said the dead comprised 12 civilians, among them four women and three children, and seven soldiers.

The United Nations World Food Program said what it called a projectile set off in the blast hit a warehouse it uses to store food for distribution to hungry Afghans.

Six Afghans living near the dump had been injured in their homes, one of them a WFP worker. Agha said 25 vehicles had been destroyed, five of them from the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Southern Afghanistan was the stronghold of the vanquished Taliban.

WIRES, EXPLOSIVES & A ROCKET FOUND UNDER A CAR IN KABUL

In Kabul, international peacekeepers said they had cleared away two cans loaded with wires and explosives and a rocket that Afghan police had found under a car in the capital.

The devices were spotted under a civilian car outside a music shop on Thursday morning, Major Angela Herbert, a spokeswoman for the International Security Assistance Force, said.

Further details of the incident were not available.

MAP CAPTION

Landlocked and mountainous, Afghanistan has suffered from such chronic instability and conflict during its modern history that its economy and infrastructure are in ruins, and many of its people are refugees. It is also afflicted by natural calamities such as earthquakes and drought. (BBC- Country profile).