Eight Afghans, including seven children, were killed in two separate blasts on Friday, officials said, the latest civilian deaths to hit the troubled country. In the first incident, four children died when a roadside bomb went off as they played near their home in Nangarhar province. In the second, three children and an old man, all members of the same family, were killed when their rickshaw hit another roadside bomb in the southern province of Uruzgan. “Four children were killed and six others were slightly injured as a result of a roadside bomb explosion,” said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar.
But the Interior Ministry said the explosion was caused by a mortar apparently left over from Afghanistan’s decades of war. It put the death toll at two. A spokesman for the chief of police in Uruzgan, Farid Ail, said the second blast came as the three children and one man were driving towards their home. “As a result of the explosion, three children and an elderly man died,” he said.