Four civilians were killed and two others were injured Saturday in a mine blast in the country's southern province of Helmand, a police source said.

"An anti-vehicle mine blasted at around 10:30 a.m. local time in Lashkari area of Helmand's provincial capital Lashkar Gah when a civilian vehicle touched it off triggering a powerful explosion. As a result four civilians were killed and two others injured," a senior police official in the province Mohammad Ismail Hotak told Xinhua.

The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch a rebel offensive from May 2011 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.

The police official, Hotak, from Afghan forces' coordination center in Helmand, also blamed Taliban insurgents for the attack in the province, 555 km south of capital city of Kabul. Civilian casualties have been on rise in insurgency-hit Afghanistan. Seven civilians were killed and eight others injured when a suicide bomb car, targeting the entrance gate of an international airport, went off in the neighboring Kandahar province Thursday. A total of 1,462 Afghan civilians were killed in the first half of 2011, a 15 percent rise over the same period of 2010, according to the United Nations mid-year report released in Kabul in July, 2011.

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