Roadside bomb kills 18 civilians in Afghanistan

A roadside bomb killed 18 civilians, mostly women and one child, when it struck a small bus coming from a wedding Sunday in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province, police said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.  The attack took place in one of the few districts in Ghazni where the Taliban retain some measure of control and often attack security forces, mostly by laying bombs along roads. Roadside bombs are the Taliban's weapon of choice and are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties.

Violence has spiked around Afghanistan in recent months as insurgents try to take advantage of a security handover from foreign forces to the Afghans. The handover is the latest step in the gradual withdrawal of troops from the U.S.-led international military coalition, a transfer set to be completed at the end of 2014.

Deputy provincial police chief Col. Asadullah Ensafi said the latest blast occurred in the Andar district as the bus was traveling from one village to another just before dusk.

The dead included 14 women, three men and a child, Ensafi said, adding that the blast wounded five other women, two of whom were in critical condition.

He said he had no other details, as the remote area was not easily accessible to security forces.

The United Nations said that in the first six months of this year 1,319 civilians were killed and 2,533 were wounded in the ongoing 12-year Afghan conflict. The majority of the casualties were caused by roadside bombs.

Earlier Sunday, a bomb apparently targeting a group of soldiers killed a civilian in a market in the capital, Kabul.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the bomb went off as military personnel waited for a vehicle to take them to work. He said five soldiers were wounded.

The Associated Press