DPA/Kabul

Afghan women attend a seminar on domestic violence in Herat, western Afghanistan yesterday.  Afghanistan’s independent human rights watchdogs and civil society organisations have been reporting that gender violence has reached an alarming level in the country and efforts must be redoubled to tackle it. Forced marriages and a lack of education have contributed to a recent spate of suicide attempts among women in Afghanistan

Six civilians including four children were killed yesterday by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, and unknown gunmen also killed four people including two women, officials said.
 The bomb struck a private vehicle in Shakarkali area of Khost city, the capital of Khost province, yesterday morning, killing six civilians and injuring another, acting provincial governor Tahir Khan Sabari said.
 “Two men and four children, including a 1-year-old boy, were killed in today’s bomb explosion,” Sabari said via phone. He said he had seen the victims in the provincial hospital.
 Another child was injured when the bomb, which was hidden under a water tank, was detonated as the vehicle passed by, he said.
 Four other civilians were killed Monday evening by unknown gunmen who opened fire on their vehicle in Khost’s Ismailkhel district, Sabari said.
 Mohamed Yaqoub Bremand, the provincial police chief, said two shopkeepers and their wives were en route home from the provincial capital when they were attacked in Haidarkhilo village of the district. A child riding the vehicle was injured, he said.
 No group immediately took responsibility for the latest attacks in Khost. Both the governor and the police chief blamed “enemies of Afghanistan” for the recent killings, a term often used by Afghan officials to describe Taliban insurgents.
 Afghan civilians have borne the brunt of the Taliban-led insurgency that is now into its ninth year since the ouster of their radical Islamic regime by US-led forces in late 2001.
 Some 1,500 civilians were killed in attacks, including Nato airstrikes and Taliban bombings, in the first eight months of this year, according to a UN report.
A US soldier has been killed in a Taliban attack in southern Afghanistan, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said yesterday.
“One US service member was killed during an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan yesterday,” it said in a statement that provided no other details.
Southern Afghanistan is the centre of a Taliban-led insurgency that is in its ninth year and taking an increasingly heavy toll on the more than 100,000 foreign troops deployed under US and Nato command.
Foreign troop fatalities so far this year in Afghanistan have reached 481, including 297 Americans, according to a running tally by the icasualties.org website. This compares to 295 foreign deaths for all of 2008.