Road bomb hits Afghan minibus, many feared dead

A roadside bomb destroyed a crowded minibus in a province in southern Afghanistan and many of its passengers are feared killed, a spokesman for the provincial governor said.

Rafi Behrozan, the spokesman for the Herat governor, said he did not know how many people died in the blast, but added that the explosion in the Kushk Kuhna district was powerful and killed the majority of the passengers on board.

Minibuses usually carry between 15 to 20 people and he said the vehicle was crowded with members of an extended family.

“The explosion was very strong and the vehicle was destroyed. The majority of these aboard were killed,” Mr. Behrozan said.

Also on Thursday, NATO said a coalition airstrike the previous day killed four Afghan soldiers after they were mistaken for militants.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the soldiers had left their base in Helmand’s Musa Qala district on Wednesday night when they came under fire from NATO planes.

NATO told the Afghan government that the coalition thought the men were militants, he added.

A spokesman for NATO forces, Capt. Ciro Parisi of the Italian army, said a team has been sent to investigate the incident. He would not confirm any of the details of Gen. Azimi’s account, citing the ongoing investigation.

There have been other incidents this year in which NATO troops mistakenly killed Afghan forces.

In August, three Afghan policemen were killed in northern Jowzjan province in an airstrike aimed at insurgents who were attacking them. In July, In July, a botched NATO airstrike killed six Afghan soldiers in Ghazni province in the east. The coalition said the Afghan army unit gave the wrong location to international forces.