Afghan graveyard bomb kills 14 Hamid Karzai, right, attends prayers for Eid al-Fitr in Kabul. A bomb hidden in a cemetery killed seven Afghan women and seven children who had gathered to mark the festival of Eid al-Fitr at the grave of a relative, as President Hamid Karzai called for the Taliban to lay down their arms and join peace talks. The bloody start to a festival that is supposed to be a time of joy and family reunions underlined the intensity of Afghanistan's conflict this summer. In a separate incident on the eve of the festival, gunmen shot dead a female senator's eight-year-old daughter and her driver. The senator, Rouh Gul Khairzad, and other relatives were injured but survived the ambush in Ghazni, an increasingly violent province south of Kabul. In Helmand on the same day, a suicide bomber targeted the car of the provincial police chief, killing three of his bodyguards, though the commander escaped unharmed. Nato troops are in the middle of a drawdown that will end next year, and insurgents are testing the skills and resolve of the Afghan police and army taking over from them. The graveyard bombing happened in a rural area of eastern Nangahar province. The district chief, Mashoq Malam, told the Associated Press: "These are cruel people who don't respect God or Islam and planted a mine on a grave. As soon as the poor women and children gathered by the grave, it exploded. The bomb was hidden on the grave of a tribal elder who had been killed about eight months ago by the Taliban. The dead elder's brother told the Associated Press that he had lost at least one child in the attack and the family was devastated. My family is finished. These people are inhuman," said Haji Ghalib, a former anti-Soviet fighter who said he had spent time in Guantánamo Bay prison as a suspected Taliban sympathiser but was now on a government commission to try to broker peace talks. The rural deaths came days after the provincial capital, Jalalabad, which lies near the border with Pakistan, was shaken by three consecutive days of attacks. In the first, an assault by gunmen on the Indian consulate in the city, several children studying in a nearby mosque were among nine civilians killed. Two other attacks including a magnetic bomb attached to a police car claimed several lives. Karzai, who is due to step down next April, condemned the "cowardly" attack on civilians on a day that should be filled with joy. "They even attack in a Muslim cemetery on the start of Eid, they kill our innocent countrymen," he said. Earlier in an Eid speech after prayers in the capital, Kabul, he called on the insurgents to lay down their weapons and stop killing innocent civilians, highlighting the high toll from roadside bombs during the holy month of Ramadan.