KABUL, Feb 5 — A car bomb in the south Afghan city of Kandahar killed at least nine people and wounded 19 today, the presidential palace said in a statement.

The Kandahar province’s media office said five police officers and two civilians were among the dead.

“(The) explosion took place near a busy shopping area of (the) city,” it said on its official Twitter feed.

Last year, fighting in Afghanistan killed more than 3,000 civilians, the United Nations said yesterday, the fifth year in a row that the number of civilian deaths has risen.

Suicide attacks carried out by insurgents and roadside mines were the biggest killers of non-combatants, the UN report said.

“Once more, enemies of the people of Afghanistan showed, by launching such a terrorist attack in a crowded place in Kandahar city, their enmity toward the innocent people of Afghanistan,” President Hamid Karzai said in the palace’s statement. — Reuters