KABUL : A bomb tore into a minibus in Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing nine civilian men, women and children, a doctor said, in another bloody Taliban attack ahead of presidential elections.
A further four people were wounded in the blast in the southern province of Kandahar's Maiwand district, heartland of the Taliban militia behind a growing insurgency it is feared could overshadow the August 20 poll.
"Nine bodies and four wounded men have been admitted to our hospital," said a doctor at the main hospital in Kandahar city.
"Six of them are men, two are women and there is a child. The bodies were put in a car by the police there and sent to the hospital. They are here now," said the doctor, Daud Farhad.
A similar blast hit a civilian car in adjacent Zhari district, wounding five more people, the district chief said.
The interior ministry confirmed the explosion and blamed the "enemies of Afghanistan" -- a reference to the Taliban, who are strong in the south.
Civilians bear the brunt of Afghanistan's intensifying insurgency.
The United Nations announced last month that the conflict had killed more than 1,000 civilians in the first six months of 2009, up almost a quarter over the same period last year.
Nearly 60 percent of the civilian deaths were caused by insurgents attacks, most often bombings, and 30 percent by pro-government military forces, the UN's Afghanistan office said.
The remainder were unattributable to any party to the conflict.
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