UN says 15 killed in bomb blast

Fifteen people were killed when a bomb explosion ripped through a bus in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on Wednesday, according to a UN official. The incident is the latest in a series of such incidents in the country. "Fifteen people - eight men, six boys and a woman - were killed as a result of a bomb explosion in a bus in Manja village in the Nad-e Ali District of Helmand Province, just 10 kilometres from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah," David Singh, a media relations officer of the United Nations Assistant Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN in the capital, Kabul. UNAMA said the cause had been a magnetic bomb placed in a box, and "the reason for the explosion is still under investigation". Helmand Province has suffered an increase in violent attacks recently, largely blamed on resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives based in Pakistan. Deputy governor for Helmand, Maulavi Peer Mohammad told IRIN he didn't know who or what the target was, but believed the Taliban and their allies were responsible. Over the last two weeks, 12 Afghan soldiers and an aid worker were shot dead in two separate incidents in the fragile province. According to provincial authorities, on 7 August, renegade Taliban groups attacked a security post in Dishu, a border district, killing seven, including a local employee of the international NGO Mercy Corps. That attack followed a similar incident two weeks earlier when six Afghan government soldiers were killed as they patrolled the province's desert region of Gereshk following reports of theft and robbery in the area. Afghanistan's southern region has been experiencing repeated attacks and increasing security incidents in the last few months. Government officials in the south said the security situation was undermining rehabilitation and humanitarian activities on the ground. Following the incident in Dishu, the UN announced on Sunday that its missions to the border districts of Helmand and Kandahar provinces had been suspended. The UN said there were also currently no missions to Oruzgan and Zabol or to the northern part of Helmand. However, Lashkar Gah, where the latest incident occurred, had been declared safe and open to UN missions. "I have not been told of any new decision regarding road missions to Lashkar Gah," Singh stated. Wednesday's attack comes just two days after NATO took command of the 5,000-strong UN-mandated multinational peacekeeping force in and around Kabul. Afghan government officials and aid workers have consistently called for the force's mandate to be extended beyond the confines of the city in an effort to boost security country-wide - seen as a key factor in the context of the country's future reconstruction.