Suicide blast kills 10 Afghan civilians

A suicide attack on a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan on Friday killed 10 civilians and wounded some NATO soldiers, police and a NATO spokesman said.

The attack was in Helmand, one of Afghanistan's most violence-plagued provinces to the west of Kandahar province where Afghan government and NATO soldiers battled Taliban militants on the outskirts of the provincial capital this week.

"The civilians were killed in Girishk district when a suicide bomber attacked a foreign forces' convoy," said provincial police chief Hussein Andiwal.

Andiwal said the bomber was on foot and six civilians were wounded, adding he did not know if there were any casualties among the soldiers in the convoy.

A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said some soldiers had been wounded.

"We confirm casualties but we don't confirm fatalities," said the ISAF spokesman.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, claimed responsibility for the blast.

Late on Thursday, two soldiers from a separate U.S.-led force in Afghanistan were killed in a clash in Helmand, a Taliban bastion and the country's biggest opium-producing region.