Construction workers killed in Afghan attack

Ten people have been killed in an attack on a road construction workers’ camp in the western Afghan province of Herat, while five members of a family died in a separate roadside bomb explosion in the south, officials said.

Deputy Public Works Minister Ahmad Shah Wahid said nine construction workers and a policeman were killed in Karukh district on Saturday when armed men attacked the camp just after midnight with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.

The workers were employed by a government-owned road construction company, Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, provincial police spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

A roadside bomb also killed five civilians, including a woman and three children, and wounded three others in the southern province of Helmand province on Saturday morning.

“They were on their way to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, for shopping,” the Helmand governor’s spokesman told AFP.

A day earlier, an improvised explosive device killed three women in Musa Qala district of Helmand province on Friday, a police spokesman said.

IEDs are the Taliban’s weapon of choice in their battle against the US-backed government and foreign forces, but they often kill and wound civilians.

According to a recent UN report, civilian casualties in the Afghan war rose 23 percent in the first half of this year due to Taliban attacks and increased fighting between armed groups and government forces.