Twenty people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded market in a restive province of southern Afghanistan today. General Abdul Hameed, the commander of the Afghan National Army in Uruzgan province that a suicide bomber on foot detonated himself at the gate of a money exchange market. He said, 20 civilians have been killed and 13 wounded, so far in the attack. A police officer was also killed in a separate bombing in the province of Helmand to the south of Uruzgan. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force described the second bombing in the Musa Qala district as a Taliban-style attack which also wounded at least four other people. Both Uruzgan and Helmand are flashpoints of the insurgency, which appears to be peaking at its bloodiest phase since the Taliban militia was overthrown in a US-led invasion in late 2001.