Kabul: Four civilians and a policeman were
killed Tuesday by a bomb which exploded in a bazaar in southern
Afghanistan, police said.
The blast took place around 1:00pm in the
insurgency-hit Dihrawud district of Uruzgan province, said
Gulab Shah, head of the provincial criminal investigation
police force.
"The bomb went off near a police car in Dihrawud
district," he said. "One policeman and four civilians were
killed."
The police official blamed the Taliban for the attack,
though the militants were not immediately contactable for
comment.
The Taliban have frequently targeted the Afghan police
and other state employees in their ten-year war against
President Hamid Karzai`s Western-backed Kabul government.
However, civilians have been the main victims of the
insurgency.
According to figures released by the United Nations,
1,462 Afghan civilians died in the first six months of 2011, a
15 percent increase on the same period in 2010.
The UN report released in July said insurgents
accounted for 80 percent of all deaths, foreign troops were
responsible for 14 percent and six percent could not be
attributed. Nearly half of all casualties caused by bomb
attacks.
PTI
