* Violence across Afghanistan at worst since 2001
* NATO-led force says kills "numerous" insurgents
(Recasts with new bomb; changes dateline, previous KANDAHAR)
By Zekaria Nasiri
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Jan 16 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb destroyed a car carrying nine people to a wedding in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing everyone inside including one child, the provincial governor said.
The previous day, six civilians were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Helmand province and another six died after an airstrike by foreign forces in mountainous eastern Kunar, local officials said.
Three children were among the dead in the airborne attack on two houses in the Kodagai area which straddles Kunar's Dangam and Shigal districts, Sultan Sediqi, a member of the provincial council, told Reuters.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement that an air raid in Kunar's Dangam district had killed "numerous" insurgents, after they were identified as an imminent threat to ground forces.
It was not clear if this was the incident referred to by Sediqi.
When asked about the allegations of civilian casualties, a spokeswoman for NATO-led forces said they had not carried out any operations in Shigal and those killed by the air operation in Dangam had been "positively identified as insurgents".
Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government, with the insurgency spreading rapidly in previously peaceful areas such as the north, and civilian and military casualties at record levels.
A recent string of attacks around the country has helped to dispel expectations of a winter lull in fighting. While insurgents normally target Afghan and foreign troops, civilians often bear the brunt of the attacks as they are caught in the crossfire.
Sunday's blast in Pul-e-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province, which lies on the main highway connecting Kabul to the north, killed six women and two men along with the child, said provincial governor Abdul Majid.
The roadside bomb in the violent Sangin district of southern Helmand province killed six people on Saturday the provincial governor's spokesman, Dawood Ahmadi, said on Sunday.
Sangin district is one of the main battlefields in the intensifying fight between Afghan and NATO-led forces on one side and the Taliban on the other, in the group's southern strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar province.
The United Nations has said 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 wounded between January and October last year -- up 20 percent from 2009.
On Jan. 7, a suicide bomber killed 17 people, including 16 civilians, and wounded 21 others, inside a public bathhouse in neighbouring Kandahar province, the country's worst attack in nearly six months.
A record 711 foreign troops were also killed in 2010, according to monitoring website www.iCasualties.org.
Afghan forces have been hit even harder. The government has said 1,292 Afghan police, 821 Afghan soldiers and 5,225 insurgents were killed.
(Additional reporting by Ismail Sameem in Kandahar, Mohammad Hamed in Kunduz and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Writing by Matt Robinson, editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)
(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan))
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