Roadside bomb kills 25 civilians in Afghanistan

KABUL - A roadside bomb tore through a passenger bus in western Afghanistan Wednesday, killing 25 civilians, a provincial governor said.

At least 20 other civilians were injured in the blast that took place in Bakwa district of Nimroz province, Governor Gholam Dastagir Azaad said.

“Women and children are among those killed but due to remoteness of the area we don’t have any figures yet,” Azaad said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of the Taliban insurgents.

The attack came a day after the Afghan government said that 52 civilians were killed when a NATO rocket hit a residential house in Sangin district of the southern province of Helmand Friday. NATO rejected that civilians had been killed and said a joint investigation was under way.

The militants rely heavily on use of roadside bombs as part of their insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government and the around 140,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

At least 1,074 civilians have been killed and over 1,500 injured in armed violence in the first half of this year, a report by the Afghanistan Rights Monitor said.