The mayor of Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan and the birthplace of the Taliban movement, was killed in a suicide attack on Wednesday, police said.

Ghulam Haidar Hameedi died when a suicide bomber set off explosives hidden in his turban as the mayor spoke with some citizens in the courtyard of the city hall, police General Abdul Raziq told AFP.

The death comes two weeks after the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the so-called "King of Kandahar", who was a key strongman in the region and an alleged drugs baron who was also the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Kandahar -- home to President Karzai's family and scene of some of the war's bloodiest fighting over the course of a decade -- is a hotbed of tribal rivalries over local influence and money.

Hameedi was killed while he spoke to local people about a land dispute in which the mayor had ordered some houses to be destroyed as they were built illegally, participants at the meeting told AFP.

Two children were reportedly killed on Tuesday while the houses were being knocked down.