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The government said the attackers aimed to blow open Kandahar's prison and free its inmates, including militants
Kandahar was hit by five blasts on March 13
Kandahar was the Taliban's base during their rule of the country, which ended with the US-led invasion
A series of suicide attacks in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar killed at least 27 people on Saturday, a senior official said, in the country's deadliest assault so far this year.
Kandahar authorities appealed for all health workers to immediately report for duty and for citizens to go to health centres to donate blood.
"We have now received 27 bodies and there are at least 52 people wounded, all figures include civilians and policemen," Abdul Qayoom Pukhla, Kandahar's public health director told AFP.
An official with an international aid organisation, who did not want to be identified, said there were 30 dead at Kandahar's Mirwais hospital, but the figure could not be immediately confirmed with city officials.
"We are in urgent need," said an announcement on local television appealing for residents to donate blood and all doctors and nurses to report to the hospital to offer help.
The attack comes as tens of thousands of extra troops are arriving in Afghanistan as part of a new US-led counter-insurgency strategy aimed at speeding an end to the war on the Taliban uprising, now in its ninth year.
The first major offensive of the new strategy is taking place in Helmand province, neighbouring Kandahar province, and US military leaders say Taliban strongholds in Kandahar are among future targets.
The explosions began around 8:00 pm (1530 GMT), interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashery told AFP earlier.
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.
A police officer with the provincial police headquarters, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been a total of five explosions 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 added.
The interior ministry's Bashery said the city's main prison was one of the main targets of what appears to have been a coordinated series of attacks bearing the hallmarks of the Taliban.
Up to 1,000 Taliban inmates escaped from the Sarpoza prison in June 2008 after a brazen suicide attack blew open the front gates and destroyed the walls.
BBC television said a Taliban spokesman had claimed responsibility for Saturday's carnage.
Kandahar was the site in late August of a massive truck bomb that killed 43 people and injured another 65, most of them civilians, in the deadliest attack for Afghanistan in 2009.
Taliban denials of involvement in that attack were dismissed as the militants often distance themselves from operations that claim high numbers of civilian lives.
The city, capital of the eponymous province, is symbolic of the Taliban uprising blighting the country. It is the seat of the movement and was its capital during the extremists' rule which ended in 2001 when US-led troops invaded.
Remnants of the movement have since regrouped to wage an increasingly deadly insurgency, which last year killed more than 500 foreign troops.
The insurgents have supplemented suicide vehicles -- usually sedans and off-road vehicles -- with roadside bombs, which have taken an enormous toll on the foreign troops leading the fight.
US President Barack Obama and NATO allies have pledged to boost troops to 150,000, from 121,000, by August this year, with most of the new deployments headed to the volatile south.
The first test of the new tactic is taking place in a poppy-growing plain of central Helmand, where Taliban militants have for years controlled the Marjah farming region along with drug traffickers.
Helmand is 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 aimed at paving the way for the reestablishment of Afghan government control.
Thirty-five people were killed in an assault on Kandahar described by the Taliban as a pre-emptive response to Western plans to eradicate them from the strategic city, officials said Sunday.
A series of massive explosions rocked the southern city late Saturday in what appeared one of the biggest coordinated assaults by the militants since their insurgency began more than eight years ago.
The governor of Kandahar province said he had requested more troops to help secure the city from further attacks by the Taliban, who regard it as their spiritual centre.
Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashery said the attackers aimed to blow open Kandahar's prison and free its inmates, including militants.
He said the dead comprised 13 police officers and 22 civilians, and that another 57 people were injured.
The attack came as tens of thousands of extra troops are arriving in Afghanistan as part of a new counter-insurgency strategy aimed at concluding the US-led war on the Taliban.
Among the injured were 40 civilians -- including six women and three children -- and 17 police officers. Forty-two houses close to the city's prison and its police headquarters were destroyed or badly damaged.
"Initial information shows that after the prison attack the enemy attacked locations and routes that end up at or are en route to the prison in an effort to prevent police from going and securing the prison," Bashery said.
President Hamid Karzai branded the perpetrators "enemies of Islam and Afghanistan".
"Those who do not respect Islamic values and act against them no doubt will be cursed by God and will go to hell," he said in a statement.
The city was hit by five blasts at 8:00 pm (1530 GMT) on Saturday. The first, caused by a huge suicide car bomb, occurred outside the prison and was followed by a similar blast outside provincial police headquarters.
Three other explosions were probably also suicide attacks, Bashery said.
"Most of the police casualties were outside the police headquarters where officers had stopped and surrounded the vehicle laden with explosives as it detonated," he said.
Early Sunday police seized eight explosive-packed suicide vests and three rockets from a house near the prison. The Taliban plan appeared to be to first break into the prison, then use suicide vests and rockets to burst open cells and free prisoners, Bashery said.
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, told AFP the attack was a response to comments by the commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan that Kandahar would be targeted in military efforts to eradicate the Taliban.
Kandahar was the Taliban's base during their rule of the country, which ended with the US-led invasion in 2001.
"This was an answer to General (Stanley) McChrystal, who announced Operation Omaid in Kandahar," Ahmadi said, using the name of the battle plan.
"This was to sabotage the operation and to show we can strike anywhere, any time we want."
Kandahar governor Turyalai Wisa said at least 10 people attending a wedding party were among the dead. Rescue workers were still searching the rubble.
He told reporters he had asked the Kabul government to send more forces to improve security.
"We have asked the central government to send us more security forces, especially intelligence workers, and they have accepted our request in principle," he said.
Up to 1,000 Taliban inmates escaped from Kandahar's Sarpoza prison in June 2008 after a suicide attack blew open the gates and destroyed the walls.
Another explosion took place early Sunday close to the Kandahar office of a Japanese construction company, injuring five employees -- four of them Pakistanis and one an Afghan.
The first major offensive of the current war strategy is taking place in Helmand province, neighbouring Kandahar province.
Visiting Afghanistan last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told troops to brace for a tough fight as generals lay their plans to battle the Taliban in Kandahar.
The US and NATO are deploying an extra 30,000 troops over coming months, bringing to 150,000 the total number of foreign troops in Afghanistan, concentrated on the southern Taliban strongholds.
Further west in Farah province, where Taliban activity has escalated in the past year, police chief Mohammad Faqir Askar said nine Taliban including three Arabs were killed Saturday by Afghan and coalition forces in Gulistan district.
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