A roadside bomb ripped through a vehicle carrying a wedding party in western Afghanistan, killing 10 persons, mostly women and children, besides injuring four others, the police chief of the western Herat province said Wednesday.

He said the bomb was planted by “enemies of Afghanistan,”–as the Taliban is referred to in the country–to target military forces, but it struck the civilian bus resulting in the deaths.

He said the bomb was planted on a road between Herat and Nimroz provinces, bordering Iran. No group or individual has owned up the attack.

Earlier, a similar explosion left three civilians dead in the southern province of Ghazni.

In a separate incident, more than nine people, including eight girl students, were killed and ten others were injured after a roadside bomb destroyed their school bus in the Khash Rod district in Nimroz province.

Three of them were flown to a coalition hospital for treatment, said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which confirmed the attack.

Condemning the attack in the strongest possible terms, a spokesman for the ISAF said their thoughts and concerns were with the families of this “senseless crime.”

“This is a horrific tragedy and demonstrates the indiscriminate killing of civilians from IEDs (improvised explosive devices) planted by insurgents,” said US Army Col. Rafael Torres, director of ISAF Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center.

Remote-controlled bombs–commonly known as ‘improvised explosive devices,’ or IEDs–the key weapon in the Taliban arsenal, are said to account for most of the casualties in its fight with Afghan forces, being supported by more than 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops.

Official estimates said over 1,200 Afghan civilians were killed in Taliban-led militancy over the past six months.

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