KABUL: Seven police officers were killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday when their jeep hit a roadside bomb apparently planted by insurgents, a provincial police chief said.

The bombing in the central province of Ghazni, an area wracked by a Taliban insurgency, came as authorities investigated claims that dozens of civilians were killed in US-led air strikes against rebels in western Afghanistan.

‘Public order policemen were on their way from Kandahar province to Kabul when their vehicle was struck by a bomb in Andar district of Ghazni province,’ provincial police chief Khial Baz Sherzai told AFP.

‘Seven policemen were killed and one is wounded. The bodies are on the way to Kabul.’

The interior ministry confirmed the blast but said five policemen were killed and two wounded.

The bomb was planted by ‘the enemies of the country,’ it said in a statement, referring to the Taliban and radical militants behind an insurgency.