KABUL — Roadside bombs killed at least 17 civilians in a 24-hour span, including nine people — a child among them — whose vehicle was torn apart by a powerful blast Sunday as they were on their way to a wedding in northern Afghanistan.
Civilians are dying in record numbers as the war in Afghanistan enters its 10th year, and crude but powerful homemade bombs are the greatest hazard facing them. Insurgents plant the devices with the aim of killing Western troops, but more often it is noncombatants who die or are maimed.
The wedding guests, all members of the same extended family, were killed when their station wagon hit a bomb outside Pul-i-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province north of Kabul, provincial authorities said. Baghlan, along with a wide swath of northern territory, has become far more dangerous over the past year as the Taliban insurgency pushes out from its traditional strongholds in the south and east.
A spokesman for the provincial government, Mahmood Haqmal, said two men, six women and one child died.
Family members and neighbors often travel together in overcrowded vehicles, particularly in rural areas, so a single bomb has devastating results.
On Saturday, in Helmand province in the country’s south, a minivan triggered a roadside bomb, killing six people, and two others were killed by an improvised bomb in neighboring Oruzgan province, officials said.
The Helmand bombing took place in Sangin district, one of the conflict’s most bitterly contested enclaves. U.S. Marines have been suffering heavy casualties in the district, as did British forces deployed there previously.
