KANDAHAR: Four Afghan children and a woman were killed on Monday when the vehicle they were travelling in hit a roadside bomb in the country's troubled south, police said.

Six other people were also injured when the blast tore apart a minivan in the volatile Chora district of Uruzgan province.

Farid Ail, a spokesman for Uruzgan's police chief, said: “Five civilians were killed - four children and one woman - and six others wounded, one woman, two children and three men.”

Roadside bombs are frequently planted by Taliban-led insurgents fighting a decade-long war against Nato-led foreign troops and Afghan government forces.

There are around 140,000 international troops, mainly from the United States, in Afghanistan helping government forces combat the insurgency.

According to the UN, the number of civilians killed in violence in Afghanistan rose by 15 per cent in the first six months of this year to 1,462, with insurgents blamed for 80 percent of the killings.