Roadside bomb kills 15 civilians in south Afghanistan

A roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan killed 15 civilians, including children, a provincial spokesman said on Saturday, blaming the attack on Taliban militants.

A truck carrying the people was on its way from Khair Abad village to Khansheen district centre in Helmand province when it was hit by a home-made device late Friday, provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP.

"The blast killed 15 civilians and wounded another four," he said, adding that children were among the dead

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which are crude, cheaply made and difficult to detect, have become the weapon of choice for Taliban militants in their increasingly deadly nine-year insurgency against Afghan and NATO forces.

The deaths were the latest in an upsurge of violence that has made this year the deadliest for both Afghans and foreign troops since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban.

There was also a suicide bomb attack on Saturday in northern Kunduz province, one of several areas that were relatively peaceful for many years but where the insurgency is now spreading fast. It is also used as a springboard to launch other attacks.

The attacker was driving a police vehicle and targeted an Afghan National Army convoy, wounding five soldiers and three women who were in the area, said Char Dara District Chief Abdul Wahid Omakheil. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the group carried out the attack.

U.S. president Barack Obama is expected to unveil a review of his Afghanistan war strategy next week, although officials have said they do not expect it to result in major policy shifts.

Obama has pledged to start bringing home U.S. troops -- the majority of a 150,000-strong international force -- from next year, but not yet decided on the pace of the withdrawal, which many commanders and officials say should happen gradually.

According to U.N. figures, 1,271 civilians were killed in the first six months of this year, a 21 percent jump on the same period in 2009. And around 680 troops have died so far in 2010 around a third of the total deaths since the start of the war.

Last month, NATO leaders agreed to hand control of security in Afghanistan to Afghan forces by the end of 2014 and said the NATO-led force could halt combat operations by the same date if security conditions were good enough.

But some U.S. and NATO officials have said the spike in violence and problems in building up a capable Afghan army and police force to take over could make it hard to meet the 2014 target date set by President Hamid Karzai.