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Twelve civilians, of them 10 children, were killed in a roadside bombing in southern Afghan province of Helmand on Friday. "A vehicle touched off a roadside bomb at around 2 pm local time in Goband area of Gereshk district and the powerful blast killed 12 innocent civilians," spokesman Daud Ahmadi told Xinhua. The killed included seven girls and three boys as well as two women and the victims were members of two families. He blamed Taliban insurgents for placing the bomb along the road in the province 555km south of Afghan capital Kabul . Taliban militants use Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or roadside bombs and suicide bombers in their attacks which also inflicted casualties on civilians. However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet. A total of 1,145 Afghan civilians were killed in conflicts in the first six months of 2012 in insurgency-hit country, 15-percent down in overall civilian casualties compared with the same period in 2011, according to a UN report released in capital Kabul on Aug. 8. The roadside bombs and IEDs were alone accounted for 33 percent of all civilians' deaths, leaving 327 civilians dead and 689 others injured in the same period of time.

12 Afghans die in bombing in southern province