KABUL: Insurgents threw hand grenades into two houses in the province of Kandahar, killing a child in one and wounding six people — including a woman and a child — in the other, a local official in southern Afghanistan said.

The Kandahar governor's spokesman, Zelmai Ayubi, said the attack occurred Friday morning in the district of Zhari, a Taliban heartland west of Kandahar city at the centre of the 30,000-soldier US surge earlier this year.

Ayubi said authorities were investigating why the two houses were targeted. He said the wounded had been taken to a nearby Nato base for medical help, and that two of the wounded were in serious condition.