A string of roadside bomb attacks killed 11 civilians including five children in insurgency-hit Afghanistan, authorities said on Sunday. Five children were killed in the western province of Herat when a roadside bomb went off Saturday, the interior ministry said in a statement. The children were playing in Angil district when the buried device went off, it said.
Six other civilians were killed in two separate but similar bomb blasts Saturday in the troubled southern province of Helmand, the statement said. The statement did not give more details about the bombings but it blamed the attacks on Taliban insurgents.
Improvised bombs are a favourite weapon of the militants fighting to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul.
There are about 120,000 troops under Nato and US command in Afghanistan battling the Taliban-led insurgency now in its ninth year, with troop numbers expected to swell to 150,000 within months.