A suicide bomber has killed the police chief in Kunduz – the province in northern Afghanistan where the Dutch will send a police training mission later this year.

At least two other people were killed according to news agencies. Eyewitness reports say the bomber walked up to the police chief, Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili, in Kunduz city and set off the device.

Violence has been on the increase in Kunduz in the past few months with an increasing number of Taliban attacks.

Another suicide bomber killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens more in an attack at an administrative centre in the province two weeks ago.

The previous Dutch cabinet collapsed over a wrangling about extending a mission to Afghanistan last year.

The new police training mission under the new government was only agreed after much political debate and passed through parliament with a narrow majority.

The new Dutch mission will consist of 545 personnel stationed in Kabul and the northern province of Kunduz, including 225 police trainers and military personnel providing medical and logistics support.

In the previous mission - which claimed the lives of 24 Dutch soldiers - some 1,950 troops were sent as part of the ISAF force, mainly to the central province of Uruzgan.

The previous deployment lasted four years and ended last August.