Kabul - Five children and two German soldiers were killed Monday in a suicide bombing near the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, the governor of Kunduz province said.

Two other children who were playing nearby and two German soldiers were also wounded, Engineer Mohammad Omar said.

The governor said the attacker on a bicycle blew himself up next to a German army convoy in Amanullah village, five kilometres south of the Chardara district.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on its website, saying one of its fighters, identified only as Islamuddin, carried out the bombing.

Twelve German soldiers were killed and several others were wounded, the Taliban statement claimed, adding that the incident happened as Afghan and German troops were searching houses in the area.

The Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist former rulers of Afghanistan, often give higher casualty figures for Afghan and foreign forces than government and military officials.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the deaths of two of its soldiers in a statement issued by its headquarters in Kabul.

"Acts such as this, which offer nothing but violence and death, will not deter us in our commitment to create a better Afghanistan," said Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, an ISAF spokesman.

Taliban militants have recently heavily relied on suicide and roadside bombings as part of their campaign against the Western-backed Afghan government and international forces.

Northern Afghanistan is relatively peaceful compared with the south and east, where Taliban militants are the most active.

But Omar raised concerns that the region could be plagued by more assaults in the future. "We have information that five bombers have entered into the province," he said.

Mohammad Akram, deputy minister for the Afghan Defence Ministry, said earlier this month that the Taliban had begun to penetrate northern provinces of the country in a bid to portray their insurgency as a "nationwide struggle."

Taliban militants also warned earlier this year that they would expand their fight into northern and western regions of the country.

More than 3,500 German soldiers are stationed in the northern provinces. The soldiers are part of around 50,000 ISAF troops that have been deployed to the country after the 2001 ouster of the Taliban regime.

German forces rejected pressure by other allied forces, including the US and British governments, to send its soldiers to southern and eastern Afghanistan to take part in more deadly operations against a resurgent Taliban.

Another German soldier was killed in the same district at the end of August in a roadside bombing. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that blast.

The German Defence Ministry in Berlin, which approved the deployment of an additional 1,000 German troops to Afghanistan last week, confirmed Monday's bombing.