Afghanistan bus blast 'kills 20'

Twenty people have died with another two dozen injured in Afghanistan when the bus they were travelling on hit a roadside bomb, the local governor says.

The bus was travelling on a highway in Nimroz province, the governor of Nimroz province told news agencies.

The blast went off shortly after Nato forces patrolled the area, Ghulam Dastgir Azad told AFP news agency.

Nato and US-led forces are in their ninth year fighting Taliban insurgents.

A senior Afghan interior ministry official told the BBC that the bus was on the way from Nimroz to the capital, Kabul, when it hit an improvised explosive device.

He said that security forces had been sent to the site along with ambulances to bring back to the dead and injured to Kabul.

A provincial official in Nimroz said that the road where the incident happened is "mostly used by civilians and the enemies of peace should have known that a bus does not carry police or army but villagers".