KANDAHAR: Fourteen Afghan civilians were killed and four others injured Thursday when a minivan struck a roadside bomb in a Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan.
The device exploded on a road between the districts of Gereshk and Sangin in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold where US-led international troops are battling hard against the militants.
“Now we know that 14 people, all civilians including women and children, were martyred and four others, all men, were injured,” Daud Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman, told AFP.
“The bomb was planted by the Taliban,” he added.
The militia, which frequently denies responsibility for attacks on civilians, said it played no part in the explosion.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai “strongly condemned” the devastating blast, blaming it on “the enemies of Afghanistan”, a reference to Taliban insurgents.
The attack was also condemned “in the strongest possible terms” by Staffan de Mistura, the UN's special representative for Afghanistan, who said there was “no justification for such action.”
Much of Helmand province, the heart of Afghanistan's opium trade and rich in agriculture, is under Taliban influence.
Sangin, one of Helmand's main towns, is one of the bloodiest battlegrounds in the Afghan war and around a third of all British troops killed in the conflict have died there.
British soldiers handed over responsibility for the area to US forces in September. On Monday, three people were killed in Kandahar city, in the neighbouring province, when a car bomb exploded in front of a bank where police were queuing to collect their salaries.
Confirming the latest attack, ISAF said: “More than 10 Afghan civilians were killed and several others were wounded in an explosion triggered by insurgents in a crowded area of Nahr-e Saraj district, Helmand province today.”
Afghan and Nato forces helped to evacuate the wounded, ISAF added, calling the attack “despicable.”
The nine-year war between the Afghan government, backed by 140,000 US-led foreign troops, and the Taliban is now at its deadliest.
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