NATO soldier among 11 killed in Afghanistan

A NATO soldier was killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan Friday while two Afghan women and a policeman died in attacks elsewhere linked to a deepening Taliban insurgency, officials said. The interior ministry also announced that six "enemies" were killed when they tried to abduct a policeman or one of his relatives from his home late Thursday.

A roadside bomb struck a vehicle of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in eastern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and wounding three others, an Afghan working for the alliance said. The blast was on the outskirts of Mehtarlam about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Kabul, said an employee of the alliance's press office for eastern Afghanistan.

"One of the soldiers was killed and three were wounded in the blast," said the man, named only Rahmanullah.

The 37-country ISAF does not release the nationalities of its casualties, leaving this to the home nation of the troops. The force only confirmed the explosion and said its troops were involved.

The latest death takes to 74 the number of foreign soldiers killed this year, most of them in hostile action.

Five US soldiers, a Briton and a Canadian military photographer were killed when a helicopter came down in the southern province of Helmand province late Wednesday. The Taliban said they had shot it down. In the northeastern province of Kunar, two women were killed and another six people were wounded when a rocket hit a civilian house overnight, police said. A rocket barrage was apparently aimed at an Afghan and US military base but missed, provincial police chief Abdul Jalal Jalal told AFP. He blamed "enemies of Afghanistan," a term often used to refer to the ultra-Islamic Taliban movement that has been waging an insurgency since being ousted from government in late 2001.

Up to 380 Afghan civilians were killed in Taliban attacks and anti-militant raids by military forces in the first four months of this year, the United Nations said Monday.

In a separate incident, insurgents attacked a police post in Nuristan province, sparking a gun battle that killed a policeman and a militant and wounded four police, provincial governor Tamim Nuristani said. In eastern Paktia province, men stormed a police officer's house and "tried to either take the officer or one of his family members," the interior ministry said in a statement.

-AFP