A family of six and a US soldier died in separate attacks in Afghanistan Tuesday while 25 militants and security officials were killed in other violence, authorities said. A suicide bomber destroyed a civilian vehicle about five kilometres (three miles) from the country's largest US military base, which is attached to the small town of Bagram, 50 kilometres north of Kabul, the interior ministry said.
Six people from the same family were killed, including two children, it said in a statement. Another child was wounded, it said. "Two men, two women and two children are killed," ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. "This is an act of insurgents," he said.
Such attacks are usually directed at Afghan or Western security forces that are trying to put down a Taliban-led insurgency. It came a week after a bombing in the same area killed three US troops serving with a Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as well as three Afghan civilians.
Four more US soldiers were killed in two bomb strikes Monday in the province of Wardak, which also adjoins Kabul, ISAF said. And another US soldier was killed and two wounded Tuesday in an insurgent attack in the eastern province of Paktya, the US military said.
Fighting has escalated across Afghanistan where at least a dozen people, including insurgents, have been reported killed almost daily in past weeks. The violence is likely to raise concerns about stability in the vast, predominantly rural country ahead of key presidential and provincial elections on August 20 for which Western countries have pledged thousands more troops.
In other attacks, the US military said troops raided a Taliban compound in Wardak province early Tuesday and killed six men. It also killed "six enemy combatants" in an overnight operation involving air strikes in the eastern province of Paktika targeting a Taliban commander, a separate statement said.
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