Thu, 09 Jul 2009

Two NATO soldiers have been killed in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan amid mounting insurgent attacks against the foreign forces.

Two soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were killed in an insurgent makeshift bomb blast on Wednesday, the alliance said in a Thursday statement.

It did not provide further details on the identity of the troops, nor the whereabouts of the incident.

The ISAF policy does not allow release of information on the nationalities of its casualties, leaving the announcement for their home countries.

There are about 90,000 NATO-led foreign troops in Afghanistan while a separate US-led coalition, joined by Afghan security forces, are to weed out remnants of the Taliban in the country.

On Monday, seven American troops were killed, six of them by homemade bombs and one by enemy fire, marking one of the deadliest days for foreign troops based in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001.

In recent months, US-led troops have lost control of several districts in southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan.

This prompted the US military to launch a major anti-Taliban offensive in the lower Helmand River valley ahead of the country's presidential and provincial council elections scheduled for August 20.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=100219§ionid=351020403