At least nine children and one adult have been killed when a blast ripped through a school in the southeastern Afghan province of Paktia.
While the cause of the blast on Saturday evening is still unknown, Taliban insurgents are fighting US-led troops and the Afghan National Army in Paktia and its neighbouring provinces along the border with Pakistan.
"There were four children, five teenagers and one adult killed," US military spokesperson Master Sergeant Ann Bennett said today from the US military press centre in Kabul.
She said an eight-year-old boy was being treated at a US military base, but she was unsure how many more wounded there were.
"The explosion took place last night inside a private madrassah (religious school)," Paktia Governor Haji Assadullah Wafa told Reuters by satellite phone.
The school was in the village of Naiknaam, near the town of Zormat, 125 km south of Kabul, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency..
The premises were also used by a non-government organisation for teaching Afghan women.
Bennett said the cause of the blast was under investigation by a US team.
Paktia's governor said there were contradictory reports about the cause of the blast, with some saying it was an explosive device placed on a motorcycle parked outside the school and others saying a device was planted inside the school.
Some 18,000 U.S.-led troops along with the newly formed Afghan National Army are hunting insurgents in the country south and southeast.
The Taliban militia, vanquished by a US-led uprising in late 2001, is waging a campaign of violence to disrupt Afghanistan's first presidential election on October 9.
Close to a thousand people, including militants, soldiers, civilians, aid workers and election officials have been killed in the past year.