Afghan suicide bomber kills five

A suicide bomber has killed at least five people in an attack on an anti-drugs patrol in southern Afghanistan, police and provincial officials say.

Police and civilians, at least one of them a child, were among those killed in the attack in Lashkar Gah in Helmand province. Nearly 20 others were hurt.

Helmand produces some two-thirds of global opium from which heroin is made.

Separately, US-led forces say they have killed 10 militants, two of them women, in fighting in the south and east.

Bomber 'on foot'

Accounts of the death toll near Lashkar Gah, Helmand's provincial capital, have varied.

According to the Helmand governor's spokesman, two policemen and three civilians were killed in the attack on the patrol.

Two of the civilians killed were children. Another 17 people were injured, 13 of them civilians and four police, the spokesman said.

Police told news agencies that four police officers had been killed, along with one child.

According to the deputy police chief, the patrol was travelling north of Lashkar Gah in a convoy of six vehicles when it was attacked by a suicide bomber on foot.

The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body as he approached the convoy, police say.

One vehicle was completely destroyed, and four others were damaged, the deputy police chief told the BBC.

The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says the counter-narcotics police were travelling to a district north of the capital to destroy poppy fields.

Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium, most of it in Helmand. The province is a Taleban stronghold and officials say the militants earn millions of dollars a year from the drugs trade.

Raids

The top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, Gen David McKiernan, said on Monday that heroin trafficking "eats away at good governance... and provides a funding source for the insurgency".

On Wednesday, the US military said Afghan and international troops had raided a Taleban cell in southern Kandahar province, killing six militants.

Another overnight raid killed four suspected militants, two of them women, in the eastern province of Khost.