Two bombs have torn through a crowd of villagers watching a dog fight in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, killing at least 10 people.
The double bombing in Arghandab district targeted villagers and a police vehicle, killing eight civilians and two police, Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary reported.
The violence follows a deadly Taliban-led campaign of blasts and suicide attacks that have rocked Afghanistan this month and killed more than 100 people, mostly civilians.
‘There have been two bomb blasts, one at the middle of a gathering and the other on the side of the road nearby. Eight civilians have been killed, two cops have been killed,’ the spokesman said. He said a dozen civilians and five police were wounded.
Shah Mohammad, the district chief of Arghandab, said the attack was aimed at villagers watching a dog fight.
‘People had gathered to watch dog fighting. Two explosions, from planted bombs, happened. Eight people, all civilians, have been killed.'
Dog fighting is popular in southern Afghanistan, but the Taliban banned it as un-Islamic and Sunday's bombing was the latest attack to target people watching it.
In February 2008 a suicide bombing killed more than 100 people gathered at a dog fight.
Also in the south, a NATO soldier was killed in a roadside bomb blast, the alliance's force said without giving further details.
In the western province of Herat a separate bomb explosion killed a 13-year-old boy and wounded a man, said Noor Khan Nikzad, a police spokesman. The device targeted a police vehicle, he said.
Interior ministry spokesman Bashary accused the ‘enemies of Afghanistan’, a phrase generally used by Afghan officials to refer to the Taliban, of deliberately targeting civilians.
‘We will do all we can to stop these brutalities very soon,’ he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday's blasts but similar ones in the past have been claimed by the Taliban, the main insurgent group fighting to topple President Hamid Karzai.
There are about 140,000 foreign troops, most of them American, deployed in Afghanistan to help Kabul defeat the Taliban.
