Bombs kill 14 civilians, US soldier in Afghanistan

Two separate roadside blasts in southern Afghanistan killed 14 civilians, including three children, and a US soldier underscoring the high price paid by ordinary people in the conflict with the Taliban, officials said Thursday. A blast on a road in the Gereshk district of Helmand province ripped through a vehicle carrying a family on Wednesday, killing 11 people, including two women and nine men, said Daud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the provincial governor. A 6-year-old girl survived the bombing, Ahmadi said. In the neighboring Kandahar province, three children were killed after they started playing with another bomb, which they had found on side of the road west of the provincial capital, police official Mohammad Shah Khan said. The victims were between 8 and 12-years-old, he said.