Taliban blast kills 8 in Afghanistan

Taliban bomb attacks killed at least eight people, including women and children, in Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said. A suicide bomber on a bicycle targeted a police patrol in the main market of Chahar Bolak, a small town in the northern province of Balkh, regional police spokesman Lal Mohammad Ahmadzi told Agence France Presse. The interior ministry in Kabul confirmed the incident, saying three civilians were killed and five police officers were wounded. Hours earlier, a roadside bomb ripped through a minibus in the central province of Wardak, killing five civilians, an official said. Provincial government spokesman Sahidullah Shahid said a mine exploded under the minibus, killing five civilians, including women and children. "Two others are injured," Shahid said. Four other passengers survived the explosion in the restive province's Sayed Abad district, he said. Authorities blamed both attacks on the "enemies of Afghanistan", a phrase commonly used by Afghan officials to refer to Taliban and other insurgents. On Monday, a roadside bomb killed five people in northern Afghanistan and last week twin suicide bombings killed 23 people in the south. Taliban insurgents regularly use improvised roadside bombs to target Afghan and Western military forces, but they often kill civilians who use the same roads. For the past five years the number of civilians killed in the war has risen steadily, reaching a record 3,021 in 2011 -- the vast majority caused by insurgents, the United Nations says. The Taliban are still fighting a bitter insurgency more than a decade after being toppled from power by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.