KABUL: Seven people including four militants were killed in violence across Afghanistan on Tuesday. Four suspected Taliban militants and an Afghan soldier were killed in a gun battle in southern Afghanistan, the Defence Ministry said. Four soldiers were also wounded and a suspected militant detained in the weekend clash in Uruzgan province, one of the insurgency-plagued regions of Afghanistan, the ministry said in a statement. In separate incidents in the same region, Afghan forces detained three suspected militants and seized guns and a satellite telephone, the ministry added.On Tuesday, suspected Taliban militants ambushed a police convoy in the southern province of Ghazni and one insurgent was killed in the ensuing gun battle, Interior Ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said. “No one from the police convoy was hurt but a militant was killed and his gun and ammunition seized by the security forces,” Stanizai said. The police convoy was passing through a mountainous area when insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at it.
Also on Tuesday, a suicide car-bomber attacked Canadian troops travelling in a vehicle near the Afghan capital, killing himself and a man on a horse, police and a Canadian military spokesman said. “A car full of explosive blew itself up near a Canadian vehicle passing on this road,” said Highway Police officer Ajab Gull. “A civilian on his horse passing by was killed, and you can see the head of the suicide bomber over there,” he told reporters at the scene. The horse was also killed in the blast. Gull said that a Canadian had been wounded, but Canadian military spokesman Major Marc Theriault said none of the three soldiers in the vehicle were hurt.