KABUL, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Thirteen Afghan civilians were killed when their motorised rickshaw hit a roadside bomb in southeastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, officials said, the latest casualties of escalating violence in the near decade-long war.
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst level since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 with record casualties on all sides of the conflict and a raging insurgency that has shown no signs of abating.
The latest incident took place in the Khoshamand district of Paktika, a volatile province bordering Pakistan.
Thirteen villagers were travelling to the district centre for medical treatment when the bomb struck, the provincial governor's spokesman, Mukhlis Afghan said.
The Interior Ministry condemned the attack in a statement and said women and children were among the dead.
Roadside bombs are by far the deadliest weapon deployed by insurgents in the war and are responsible for most of the casualties among international, Afghan troops as well as civilians.
Ordinary Afghans have borne the brunt of fighting as they became caught up in the crossfire. The United Nations said 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 others wounded in the first ten months of last year, a 20 percent increase compared to 2009.
Dozens of civilians have been killed this month alone.
Last year, a record 711 foreign troops were killed, according to monitoring website www.iCasualties.org, up from 521 in 2009.
Afghan security forces have been hit even harder than foreign troops. A total of 1,292 Afghan police and 821 Afghan soldiers were killed in 2010, according to the Afghan government.
The Afghan government also said 5,225 insurgents were killed last year.
(Reporting by Elyas Wahdat; Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Miral Fahmy) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan)
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