Bomb rocks another Afghan city in less than one week, seven dead

Less than a week after a bomb blast rocked Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, and killed 20 people, another explosion in the city of Lashkar Gah has left seven individuals, including civilians and soldiers, dead. 

The office of the governor of Helmand province said on Saturday that an attacker detonated his explosives-packed car that was parked next to an Afghan army vehicle in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Four civilians and three Afghan soldiers died in the blast. Twenty people were also injured.

Helmand governor’s spokesman, Omar Zwak, said 16 of the injured were also civilians. He added that the attack was carried out as soldiers arrived at a bank to collect their pay.

There has been no claim of responsibility, especially from the Taliban militant group, which controls large parts of Helmand and has always used the area as one of its main bases in years of insurgency in Afghanistan.

Lashkar Gah has already witnessed attacks on civilians and security forces claimed by Taliban.

Helmand is home to hundreds of foreign troops stationed there as part of a US-led mission to train and advise Afghan security forces. Many of those foreign troops have also been targeted in Taliban attacks. One such attack last week wounded an American special forces soldier.

US forces carried out airstrikes in Sangin district of Helmand during the late hours of Thursday or the early hours of Friday, with officials saying that a number of civilians were killed in the attacks. Afghan media did not clarify the exact time of the strikes. The US military has yet to accept responsibility for the civilian deaths.

A US military spokesman confirmed on Saturday that US warplanes had conducted strikes in the district over the past few weeks, but refused to accept that the attacks had targeted civilians.

Bill Salvin claimed that US forces had "no evidence that civilians were killed in these strikes."

Insecurity remains in Afghanistan years after the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.

The deadly explosion in Lashkar Gah came a couple of days after 20 people were killed in a similar terrorist attack outside the Supreme Court building in Kabul on February 7.

• Blast kills 20 near Supreme Court in Afghan capital

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