An explosion in a house where explosives were stored killed nine members of an Afghan family and seriously injured two, police said today.
The blast in the eastern province of Laghman yesterday was caused by an electricity surge that ignited a pile of explosives used for construction blasting, the police said.
Some Afghans make a dangerous living extracting and selling explosives from unexploded ordinance left over from more than two decades of war.
The accident happened just hours before a similar incident near the US military headquarters at Bagram to the north of Kabul that killed at least three people.
The Laghman blast instantly killed an infant and eight other members of the family died in hospital in the nearby town of Jalalabad where they had been taken for treatment, Jalalabad police chief Haji Ajab Shah said.
"Three of those who died here were children and three bothers were women," he said. Two other members of the family were in comas, having suffered severe burns, he said.
He said the family's house was destroyed and the blast shattered dozens of windows in nearby buildings.