Increasing violence: Afghan National Army soldiers inspect a damaged military vehicle after a remote-controlled bomb blast in Jalalabad on Saturday. Photo: AFP
Kunar, Afghanistan: Roadside bombs and a Taliban attack on a police post have killed 16 people, including children, in Afghanistan.
Seven civilians died when a bomb hit a truck travelling from Asadabad, the capital of the eastern province of Kunar, to Nari district near the border with Pakistan on Saturday.
"Last evening a pickup truck, with women and children onboard, was blown up by a roadside bomb, that killed seven people including two little girls," Nari police chief Mohammad Yousuf said on Sunday.
He blamed the Taliban for the blast, which also left three women wounded.
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Mohammad Rahman Danish, the district chief of Nari, confirmed the incident, part of worsening violence as US-led foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan after 13 years of fighting.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but roadside bombs are the Taliban's weapon of choice in their battle against Afghan and foreign forces. The bombs also increasingly kill and wound civilians.
In northern Afghanistan, seven police were killed and about a dozen wounded when some 200 Taliban fighters attacked their post in the Qushtapa area of Jawzjan province, said provincial police spokesman Ahmad Farid.
In a third incident on Saturday, two remote-controlled bombs hit a military vehicle in Jalalabad city in the east of Afghanistan, killing two and wounding two others, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdul Zai.
AFP