LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Four Afghan civilians were killed and two others were wounded in explosion in the country's southern province of Helmand on Monday morning, police said.
"A civilian car was running along a road in Sharsharak area of Marja district at about 9 a.m. local time but the ill-fated vehicle touched off an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and the explosion claimed the lives of four civilians and wounded two others," the provincial police department said in a statement issued here.
The injured people were shifted to a district hospital in the province 555 km south of Afghan capital of Kabul, it said, adding no woman or children was among the victims.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan forces and NATO-led troops often target security forces with IEDs or roadside bombs but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.
A total of 2,754 civilians were killed and 4,805 injured in conflict-related violence in 2012, a 12 percent drop in overall civilian casualties compared to 2011, according to a UN report released in Kabul earlier this month.
The IEDs were the single largest killer of civilians in 2012, leaving 868 people dead and 1,663 injured, according to the report.
The UN report attributed 81 percent of the civilian deaths to the attacks by Taliban and other armed groups opposing the government, another eight percent of the deaths were attributed to Afghan and NATO-led forces and 11 percent were unattributed.
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