Roadside blast kills 14 family members in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR: A roadside bomb killed at least 14 members of an Afghan family, including women and children, in the country’s volatile south on Saturday, officials said, in the first major attack in the holy month of Ramazan.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the Marja district of Helmand province, a hotbed of Taliban insurgents who are intensifying their annual summer offensive. The militants had recently rebuffed requests from senior Afghan clerics to halt attacks during Ramazan even as a surge in violence has sent civilian casualties soaring.
“Fourteen civilians were killed and five others wounded in an IED (improvised explosive device) blast in Marja district of Helmand province. All of them were from the same family,” Helmand deputy governor Muhammad Jan Rasolyar told AFP. He said their minivan struck the IED just before Iftar.
Helmand police chief Nabi Jan Mullah Khel claimed a higher toll, saying 16 civilians, including women and children, were killed while three other civilians were wounded.Haji Fateh Muhammad, a tribal elder from the region, said he counted 15 bodies as he helped retrieve them from the twisted carcass of the vehicle. Marja district in Taliban-infested Helmand province was the focus of a major US-led military offensive designed to clear out the insurgent group in early 2010.
The Taliban, who promised to “safeguard” civilian lives during their offensive, are known to distance themselves from attacks that result in high civilian casualties. But the surge in insurgents’ attacks has taken a heavy toll on ordinary Afghans, according to the UN mission in Afghanistan. Almost 1,000 civilians were killed during the first four months of this year, a sharp jump from the same period last year, it said.