Kandahar:A bomb blew up a minibus outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar today, killing 10 civilians, while a judge and his son were gunned down in the same area, police said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks, but they were similar to scores carried out by the extremist Islamic Taliban militia, which is behind a spiralling insurgency in Afghanistan. The roadside bomb hit the minibus about 20 kilometres outside of Kandahar, provincial police chief Matiullah Khan said.


The dead included two children, a woman and seven men, he said. Four other civilians were wounded. Just south of the city, meanwhile, two unidentified gunmen on motorbikes knocked on the door of the home of a provincial judge and shot him and his 14-year-old son dead when they answered, Khan said, blaming the Taliban.

Kandahar has seen much of the extremist violence that is plaguing Afghanistan despite the efforts of nearly 70,000 international troops working with the Afghan forces to contain the unrest.

Police in the neighbouring province of Helmand reported meanwhile that 17 Taliban were killed in clashes that began yesterday between Afghan security forces and militants.

A soldier was also wounded in the fighting in the Nad Ali district, which continued into today, Helmand police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.

In central Ghazni province, six Taliban were killed and five wounded in a military operation overnight, provincial government spokesman Ismael Jehangir said.

Source : PTI