Eight Afghan women and two children were killed and three adult men were wounded Tuesday morning when a vehicle was struck by a roadside bombing in the southern province of Kandahar, an official said.
"The ill-fated minibus was traveling from Zharay district to neighboring Khakrez. The bus touched off the bomb placed along the road in Khakrez district. The explosion killed eight women and two children on the spot at about 8:00 a.m. local time," provincial government spokesman Jawid Faisal told Xinhua.
Kandahar, 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, has been notorious for growing poppy and the Taliban hotbed.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group began annual rebel offensive against Afghan government forces and about 100,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the country in April.
Taliban militants, who have been waging an insurgency for more than one decade, use Improvised Explosive Devices to launch roadside bomb attack on security forces but the lethal weapon also inflicted casualties on civilians.
More than 2,000 civilians have been killed or injured since January this year in the war-hit Afghanistan, according to the United Nations mission in the country.
