Reuters, August 8, 2013

Graveyard picnic bomb kills 14 women and children in Afghan east

The victims were mainly from one family

A bomb planted in an Afghan graveyard killed 14 women and children on Thursday, many of them picnicking at the graveside of a family member during the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, officials said.

The bomb exploded in a rural district of eastern Nangarhar province, said the provincial governor's spokesman, Ahmad Zia Abdulzai.

Nangarhar and its capital, Jalalabad, have been racked by a series of bombings and suicide attacks over the last week.

It is common in Afghanistan on the first day of Eid for people to pay their respects at the graves of loved ones. The victims were mainly from one family, Abdulzai said.

Three women and one child were wounded, he added.

Three Afghan bodyguards for the Helmand province police chief, Mohammad Hakim Angaar, were killed on Wednesday in a suicide bombing, the provincial governor's spokesman, Omar Zwak, said.

In June, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the former Helmand police chief's convoy, wounding three.

(Additional reporting by Rafiq Sherzad in NANGARHAR and Mohammad Zainullah in HELMAND; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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