Roadside bomb kills 6 women and 13 children in Afghanistan

Published on Wednesday 19 January 2011 15:51

Twenty Afghan civilians, including 13 children, were killed by a roadside bomb in south-eastern Afghanistan yesterday, a senior official said, in the country's deadliest insurgent attack in nearly six months.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst level since the overthrow of the Taleban in late 2001 with record casualties on all sides of the conflict and a raging insurgency that has shown little sign of abating.

Ordinary Afghans have taken the brunt of the fighting as they become increasingly caught up in the crossfire.

Brigadier General Josef Blotz, the senior spokesman for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, said 13 children and six women were among the dead in yesterday's attack in the Khoshamand district of Paktika, a volatile province south of Kabul that borders Pakistan.

"It is another spike in this brutal Taleban arsenal and tactics and techniques. It is unjustifiable, it is brutal," Blotz said.

Afghan officials said the civilians were killed as they travelled in a motorised rickshaw to the district centre for medical treatment.

The bombing was the bloodiest insurgent attack since 28 July when at least 25 civilians were killed after their bus was hit by a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan.

In the first six months of last year, the deaths of children rose by more than half from the same period of 2009, according to the United Nations. Deaths of women also increased.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, calling it "inhumane and un-Islamic".

Roadside bombs are by far the deadliest weapon deployed by insurgents and are responsible for most of the casualties among both troops and civilians.