A teenage suicide bomber has killed at least 10 people and wounded 30 in an attack at a market in northwest Afghanistan.
A senior provincial official was seriously wounded in the attack, Faryab province governor Abdulhaq Shafaiq said.
Mr Shafaiq said the suicide bomber was a 16-year-old boy and the attack was launched in a bazaar in the Khoja Sabz Posh district of Faryab, about 600km northwest of Kabul.
He said the attack was launched as provincial council chairman Rahmatollah, who has only one name, was having lunch in a restaurant. Rahmatollah was seriously wounded and two of his bodyguards were killed, Mr Shafaiq said.
Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, with the Islamist insurgents spreading their attacks out of traditional strongholds in the south and east into once relatively peaceful areas in the north and west.
The governor of Kunduz province, in northern Afghanistan, said on Wednesday that insurgents had consolidated gains and were threatening several adjacent provinces like Faryab.
