At least 27 people, most of them civilians and one a provincial mayor, were killed in a spate of attacks in Afghanistan on Monday, officials said. In the bloodiest incident on Monday, 12 civilians - four women, two children and six men - were killed by a roadside bomb that struck as they drove in a tractor in the Shamolzai district of southern Zabul province, said Mohammad Wazir, district chief of Shamolzai.
"This was a mine newly planted by the Taliban," he told Reuters. A while later, Taliban guerrillas ambushed a convoy of a security firm in another area of Zabul, killing six Afghan security guards in the convoy and two civilians nearby, Ghulam Jailani, a senior provincial police official, said. Earlier on Monday, a provincial mayor was among seven people killed by a teenage suicide bomber who blew himself up at the gate of a municipal administration building in the eastern province of Laghman, the Interior Ministry said.