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KABUL : A suspected rebel bomb struck a minibus carrying a newly-married couple in Afghanistan on Saturday, killing the bride and groom and 11 wedding guests, police said, in the latest in a wave of insurgent attacks.
Authorities meanwhile announced that more than a dozen Taliban-linked militants were killed across the country on Friday, the same day NATO said bombs killed five of its soldiers and a civilian interpreter.
The device that blew up the wedding party in the southern province of Kandahar was likely planted to target security forces, provincial police chief Mutiullah Khan said.
He said 10 people were killed in the blast near the town of Spin Boldak close to the Pakistan border.
"A roadside bomb exploded under a minibus carrying a bride and groom. Ten people including the bride and the groom were martyred," he said.
But Spin Boldak border police commander Abdul Raziq told AFP that 13 had died: eight woman, two children and three men.
Six other people, including women and children, were wounded, both officials said.
They blamed the attack on "enemies of Afghanistan", a reference to Taliban militants involved in an extremist insurgency launched after the hardliners were removed from government in 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda.
Violence linked to the insurgency has grown year on year, despite the arrival of more international soldiers - now numbering nearly 70,000 - and the growth of the Afghan army and police force.
Afghan and Western officials say much of the unrest is being plotted across the border in Pakistan, which is under pressure to do more again Islamic extremists who set up there after the fall of the Taliban regime.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a South Asian summit in Sri Lanka on Saturday that terrorism was spreading "like wild fire" in the region, particularly in Pakistan.
"In Pakistan, terrorism and its sanctuaries are gaining a deeper grip as demonstrated by the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto," Karzai said, referring to the Pakistani opposition leader killed in December.
The five NATO soldiers killed on Friday died in eastern provinces along the border with Pakistan.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force announced their deaths on Friday but would not release their nationalities. Most foreign soldiers in the east are from the United States, which has about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Also Friday, "more than a dozen" rebels were killed in ground fighting and air strikes after attacking an Afghan and US-led coalition patrol in the southern province of Uruzgan, the US military said in a statement.
Several more were killed in the southwestern province of Farah after their hideout was discovered, it said, without giving a number.
Three other militants linked to Taliban, one of them a doctor, were killed when a bomb they were planting exploded in eastern Khost province.
Also in Farah, Islamic rebels captured six policemen following a brief firefight late Friday, provincial police chief Khalilullah Rahmani told AFP.
Seven other police officers were captured in the same area a week ago. Their fate is still unknown, Rahmani said.
The Taliban have captured several people working for the government or whom they accuse of spying for the international forces. Some have been killed. - AFP/de
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