Four NATO soldiers killed in new unrest

KANDAHAR (Afghanistan)—Four NATO soldiers were killed in new attacks in Afghanistan, including a Taliban suicide bomb Monday that also took the lives of three Afghan civilians, security forces said. Two Danes, a Canadian and a Czech with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were killed in the violence in the south of the country, which sees the worst of a Taliban-led insurgency.
A suicide car bomb ripped into an ISAF convoy as it was travelling on the main road linking the southern city of Kandahar with Herat in the west, a witness said. Three ISAF soldiers were killed and four wounded in the attack in Helmand province, the alliance force media office in Kabul said, revising an earlier death toll of four. ISAF does not release the nationalities of its casualties but the Danish military said two of its troops were killed and one injured. The soldiers were from a Danish unit that works on reconstruction projects, it said. The Czech military said separately one of its soldiers was also killed.
Helmand police chief Mohammad Hussain Andiwal said three Afghan men were killed in the blast, near a bazaar in the town of Girishk, and seven were wounded. “It was a busy hour of the day when everyone was going to their work,” Andiwal said. One of the Taliban’s main spokesmen, Yousuf Ahmadi, confirmed the attack was carried out by a fighter from the extremist militia, which was in government between 1996 and 2001.

—Agencies