'Suicide bombs' hit Afghan town

At least 20 people have been killed in two suicide bombings in a southern Afghan town, police say.

More than 40 people were hurt in the blasts in Gereshk in Helmand province, the defence ministry said. Many of the casualties were civilians.

The bomber was trying to kill a senior provincial official who survived the attacks, the defence ministry said.

There has been an upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan over the past year, with more than 3,000 people killed in 2007.

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A senior police official in Gereshk, Fakhir Ahmad Askar, told the BBC there had been two suicide bomb attacks in the town.

He said the bombers had explosives strapped to their bodies.

He believed six of those killed were police and guards and the rest civilians, many of them people working at the town bazaar where the blasts happened.

Southern Afghanistan has seen a sharp increase in bomb attacks in the past few months.

Most are targeted at foreign or national security forces, but most end up killing more civilians than soldiers or police.