Roadside bomb kills 18 Afghans

14 women, three men and a child have been killed in Afghanistan when a roadside bomb hit the bus they were in after leaving a wedding celebration.

Two men look at a victim of a roadside bomb at a hospital in the Andar district of the Ghazni province (Getty)

A roadside bomb has killed 18 civilians, mostly women and children, after it struck a small bus coming from a wedding in a lawless district of eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province.

Deputy provincial police chief Colonel Asadullah Ensafi said the blast occurred on Sunday in the Andar district as the bus travelled from one village to another just before dusk.

He said the dead include 14 women, three men and a child. Ensafi said the blast wounded five women and two were in critical condition.

Ensafi said he had no other details, as the remote area was not easily accessible to security forces.

Andar is one of the few districts in Ghazni where the Taliban retain some measure of control and often attack security forces, mostly by laying bombs along roads.

Roadside bombs are the Taliban's weapon of choice and are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties.

In a statement on Sunday night, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force condemned the attack, saying it would "fight against extremists whose senseless acts endanger innocent women and children."

The UN said in the first six months of this year, 1,319 civilians were killed and 2,533 were wounded in the ongoing 12-year Afghan conflict, the majority of them by roadside bombs.

Earlier on Sunday, a bomb apparently targeting a group of soldiers killed a civilian in a market in the capital, Kabul.

Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the bomb went off as military personnel waited for a vehicle to take them to work. He said five soldiers were wounded.

A man who identified himself as Ziaudin said his 10-year-old daughter was killed. A witness, Hashmatullah, said four civilians were wounded in addition to the soldiers. He said the bomb was placed under vegetables in a shop.

There has been a spike in violence around Afghanistan in recent months as the insurgents try to take advantage of a security handover from foreign forces to the Afghans. The handover is the latest step in the gradual withdrawal of troops from the US-led international military coalition, which will be completed at the end of 2014.