KABUL, Oct 27: Fourteen people were killed in a bomb blast in Uruzgan on Friday as the government said it believed around 25 were killed in fighting between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Taliban this week.
President Hamid Karzai said there must be better coordination between Afghan and foreign troops to avoid civilian casualties, while the United Nations expressed concern about civilians being caught up in the fight against Taliban.
The 14 — mostly elderly people and children — were travelling in a minibus that was struck by a bomb, a, Uruzgan provincial government official said.
The bus was hit just outside the provincial capital Tirin Kot, spokesman Abdul Qayom said. “Fourteen civilians, mostly elders and children, were killed in the blast and three were wounded,” he said.
The blast was caused by a mine that had been planted on the road, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. It was unclear who was behind the attack, he said.
Officials were trying to establish how many civilians were killed in clashes between Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and Taliban in Kandahar.
The interior ministry said around 60 people were killed in the battles on Tuesday, and more than half were insurgents.
Spokesman Bashary said later that about 25 of the dead appeared to have been civilians according to preliminary investigations.
An Isaf spokesman in Kandahar said it could confirm that 12 civilians were killed in the skirmishes, which included a bombing raid. Isaf has said it killed 48 insurgents.
President Karzai on Thursday appointed a commission to investigate the civilian casualties.
The president told reporters on Friday that he had spoken with people from the area, one of whom said he had lost all the members of his family except one son.—AFP
