At least 10 people have been killed, eight of them police officers, after a roadside bomb detonated in the southern city of Kandahar, officials have said.

Police in Kandahar said they went to a residential area to defuse a bomb but were hit by a second device.

There has been a wave of recent attacks targeting security forces across the country.

On Saturday, Jan 26 a suicide bomber on a motorbike killed 10 police officers in the northern province of Kunduz.

In the Kandahar attack, police had driven into a residential neighborhood of the city to inspect a bomb found there.

They had detained three suspects and were driving back in a police truck when they struck a second device that had been buried in the road.

Eight police officers and two of those who had just been detained were killed in the blast.

No-one has yet said they carried out the attack, but Taliban-linked insurgents have been blamed for a string of similar incidents, BBC News reported.