Seventeen Afghan civilians have been killed in only a 24-hour span, as homemade bomb devices likely intended for U.S. soldiers and Afghan police detonated among civilians in a day fraught with explosions. –JCL

Los Angeles Times:

Roadside bombs killed at least 17 Afghan civilians in a 24-hour span, including nine people — a child among them — whose vehicle was torn apart by a powerful blast on Sunday as they were on their way to a wedding in northern Afghanistan.

Civilians are dying in record numbers as the war in Afghanistan grinds into its 10th year, and crude but powerful homemade bombs are the greatest hazard facing them. Insurgents plant the devices with the aim of killing Western troops, but more often it is noncombatants who are left dead or maimed.

The wedding guests, all members of the same extended family, were killed when their station wagon hit a bomb outside Pul-e-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province, north of Kabul, provincial authorities said. Baghlan, along with a wide swath of northern territory, has become far more dangerous over the last year as the Taliban insurgency pushes outward from its traditional strongholds in the south and east.

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