A series of bombs and explosions killed 20 people in Afghanistan’s southern and eastern flashpoints on Saturday, among them at least eight children and four women, government officials said.
The attacks came as the UN said that May was the deadliest month for civilians in Afghanistan since at least 2007, with 368 deaths and 593 injuries of documented.
In Saturday’s deadliest incident, a vehicle hit a mine in Arghandab district of the southern province of Kandahar, one of the main battlegrounds in the nearly 10-year Taliban-led insurgency against the Kabul government and NATO troops.
“Today at 10:00 am, 15 civilians were killed, including eight children, four women and three men,” the ministry said.
One woman was also wounded in the explosion, it added.
Mines and crudely made bombs planted on roadsides are trademark tactics of the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents fighting to bring down the Western-backed government and evict US-led foreign troops.
Intended to target Afghan and NATO security forces, the bombs frequently kill and maim civilians, by the far the most numerous victims in the war.
The UN’s Afghan mission (UNAMA) said militants were responsible for 301 of the recorded civilian deaths in May, with 119 killed and hundreds injured by improvised bombs (IEDs).
Pro-government forces caused 45 fatalities, while responsibility for the other 22 could not be determined, mostly because they died in crossfire.
Last year was the deadliest for civilians in nearly a decade of conflict in Afghanistan, the UN has previously said, with 2,777 reported dead, largely at the hands of insurgents but also as a result of NATO military operations.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban, ousted from power by the 2001 US-led invasion but which regrouped to fight an increasingly deadly insurgency.
Attacks also hit eastern Afghanistan, which like the south has been a main flashpoint for violence particularly in areas bordering Pakistan, where Afghan Taliban and other militants have carved out safe havens. The interior ministry said six civilians, including a woman and two children, were wounded by mortar bombs fired at a district police headquarters in the eastern province of Kunar.
In the eastern province of Khost, a suicide bomber on Saturday killed three people including the commander of a provincial Afghan police rapid reaction force and wounded 12 others, officials said.
The attacker blew himself up in front of the police unit’s base, Khost deputy police chief Mohammad Yahqoob Mandozai told AFP.
