Afghan bomb kills 11, including children

AFP, Kandahar

A Taliban bomb attack killed 11 civilians, including children and toddlers, going to a shrine in Afghanistan on Friday, police said following a surge of attacks ahead of key elections.
The explosives ripped through a civilian pick-up vehicle taking a group of men, women and children to visit a centuries-old tomb in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar province, just a few kilometres (miles) from the Pakistani border.
"Three women, three men and five children were killed," General Saifullah Hakim, a senior border police official, told AFP.
"All of them were civilians. They were going to a shrine when their vehicle was hit by a newly planted bomb," he added. Police said three women were wounded and evacuated to hospital.
"Today at around 9:00 am, a mini-van struck a roadside bomb in the Wanaki area of Spin Boldak," General Abdul Raziq, border police chief for Zabul and Kandahar provinces, told AFP, confirming the death toll.
"Three (of the dead) children were between one and two years old. The other two were aged around five," he said. There was no claim of responsibility, but police blamed the attack on "enemies of the country"-a term used to refer to the Taliban, Islamist hardliners leading an insurgency against the US-backed Afghan government. Officers, quoting witness reports from the remote desert area, said the force of the blast ripped many of victims to pieces and that the death toll was calculated after pieces of flesh were collected from the site. Roadside bombs are the deadliest weapon used by insurgents fighting against Afghan and Western forces, but also routinely kill and maim civilians.
Raziq speculated that border police may have been the intended target of Friday's blast because there was a border police post on the same road.
Afghanistan's nearly eight-year insurgency is at its deadliest, forcing the United States to dispatch an extra 21,000 soldiers in a bid to stabilise the country ahead of presidential and provincial council elections on August 20.