A suicide car bomber has killed four Afghan security personnel and wounded more than a dozen others when their convoy was attacked in southern Helmand province.
The attack occurred hours after a bomb explosion wounded two civilians in neighboring Kandahar.
An Interior Ministry statement said Sunday Afghan security forces killed at least 27 Taliban insurgents in counter-insurgency operations in Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni and Kunar regions.
The Taliban insurgency has carried out spectacular attacks in recent months in southern Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has condemned Saturday’s killing of six Afghan civilians when their car hit a roadside bomb in the eastern Nangarhar province. The victims included a husband and wife, as well as two sons and a daughter aged between four and 12 years old. The driver of the taxi they were traveling in was also among the dead.
In a statement issued Sunday, the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said that “the use of indiscriminate, victim-activated bombs in civilian populated areas is an outrage”, adding the use of indiscriminate weapons must stop immediately. Improvised explosive devices were the second largest cause of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2014, with numbers up from 2013, the statement says.
