Taliban suicide bomber kills civilians in southern Afghanistan

The attack by the insurgents comes a day after US President Donald Trump cleared the way for thousands more American troops to be sent to the war-torn country. 

"A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-filled car in a parking lot near the main police headquarters in Lashkar Gah," Omar Zhwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, told AFP.

Women and children were among the casualties, he said, in the attack that was claimed by the Taliban.  

Provincial hospital director Mauladad Tabihdad told AFP that the wounded had been taken to hospital, most of them school children.

Among the five dead were two women and two soldiers. 

People had been waiting to enter the police headquarters when the attacker struck at 8:00 am. 

Police spokesman Salam Afghan said the bomb had targeted army vehicles in the parking lot. 

The wounded children were studying at a nearby mosque when the explosion happened, the governor's spokesman said.  

For years Helmand province, of which Lashkar Gah is the capital, was the centrepiece of the Western military intervention in Afghanistan, but it has recently slipped deeper into a quagmire of instability.

Early last month a US soldier was killed and two others wounded in an attack in Helmand province while conducting operations against the Taliban.