Ten killed as truck bombing hits army outpost in southern Afghanistan

At least ten people were killed after a Taliban truck bomb hit an army outpost in southern Helmand province on Monday, officials said.

The attack took place at around 10 am [0530 GMT] in Nad Ali district. A Taliban suicide attacker detonated his explosives-packed truck close to an army outpost, district governor Baryalai Nazari said. There were prior intelligence reports but Afghan forces could not prevent the incident, he added.

According to Nazari, civilian houses were also destroyed in the "powerful" explosion.

At least eight soldiers were among the dead, provincial councillors Hayatullah Mayar and Ataullah Afghan told dpa.

The Helmand governor's office posted on Facebook that one child and one elderly man were also killed.

In a statement, a Taliban spokesman claimed that the attack inflicted a high number of casualties on government forces.

In a separate incident, nine policemen were killed late on Sunday while trying to defuse a roadside bomb on the highway between provincial capital Lashkargah and Sangin district, councillor Ataullah Afghan said.

The attacks came as after US President Donald Trump, on an unexpected visit to Afghanistan in late November, announced the resumption of peace talks with the Taliban.

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban's political office and a member of the group's negotiating team, tweeted late on Sunday that the talks were to continue on Monday.

The US and Taliban were on the threshold of signing an agreement before talks were called off on September 5 by President Trump after a car bomb in Kabul that killed, among others, two NATO soldiers, including a US serviceman.