The latest in a wave of attacks blamed on Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has left five people dead, including a foreign soldier, police and the NATO-led military force said on Tuesday. A Taliban-style suicide attack meanwhile wounded a district governor and two police guards near the border with Pakistan. The soldier with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force was killed on Monday when a bomb struck a military vehicle travelling through Kandahar, the force said. “One ISAF soldier died and two were injured when the vehicle they were travelling in was struck by an improvised explosive device (IED) in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar yesterday,” it said in a statement. ISAF does not release the nationalities of its casualties before announcement from the soldiers’ home country.
An Afghan army soldier was killed the same day when another IED struck a military patrol in the Gereshk area of neighbouring Helmand province, ISAF spokesman Captain Andre Salloum said. “A vehicle went over an IED which was on the road. One vehicle was damaged and had to be destroyed,” he said.
In Khost meanwhile, Taliban insurgents attacked a highway police post just after midnight Monday, sparking off a gun battle that killed two Taliban and a policeman, provincial police said. Also in Khost, a suicide attacker on Tuesday detonated explosives strapped to his body near the vehicle of the chief of the Tanai district on the border with Pakistan, an official said.