Roadside bomb kills 7 civilians in eastern Afghanistan
At least seven civilians have been killed when their truck hit a roadside bomb in an area of troubled eastern Afghanistan.
Hijratullah Rahmani, a regional government official, said the fatal incident took place on Sunday as villagers were traveling from Pacheer Agam district to a nearby village in Nangarhar province. Rahmani added that a woman and three children were among the dead.
"Unfortunately, in the blast, seven civilians, including a woman and three children were killed and one was wounded," media outlets quoted the official as saying.
No individual or group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far, but Afghan officials usually blame the Taliban militant group for such incidents.
The Afghan Interior Ministry in a statement blamed "enemies of peace and stability," a term Afghan officials use to refer to Taliban.
Nangarhar is also home to the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, who are trying to expand their presence in Afghanistan by recruiting followers and challenging the Taliban on their own turf.
The terrorist group, which is mainly active in Syria and Iraq, has recently managed to take recruits from Afghan Taliban defectors. It has also enjoyed defections from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The rise of Daesh in Afghanistan has raised concerns in the country that has already been torn apart by decades of Taliban-led militancy and the 2001 invasion of the US and its allies.
The latest incident comes as civilians are paying a heavy price for the escalating conflict across the war-ravaged country. Last week, more than 50 people, mostly civilians, were killed in multiple Taliban bombings across Afghanistan.
According to a UN report, a total of 2,562 civilians were killed and another 5,835 wounded in the first nine months of 2016.
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