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Two Canadian soldiers have been killed in southern Afghanistan, while a governor escaped an assassination attempt and officials reported 12 more deaths in Taliban-linked violence.
The soldiers, part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), were killed on Saturday in the flashpoint province of Kandahar when their unit was ambushed, the Canadian defence ministry announced.
Officials in Afghanistan said three other troops had been wounded when they were attacked by rocket propelled grenades and small arms. Canadian authorities said two of its own were in stable condition with non-critical injuries.
“Other Canadian units quickly responded to the attack and became involved in a three-hour battle with insurgents” with support from ISAF helicopters, it said.
The incident brought to 42 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in the war-ravaged country, 34 of them this year. About 2,300 Canadian soldiers are based in Kandahar.
More than 115 foreign soldiers have been killed in hostile action this year, which has been the worst for Taliban attacks since the movement was toppled from government in 2001.
The governor of eastern Laghman province told AFP earlier Saturday he had survived an attack on his two-vehicle convoy as he was travelling to work.
The front vehicle hit a mine and attackers then opened fire on the stricken convoy, killing an administration official, governor Gulab Mangal said.
“A bomb struck under our front vehicle. Then we had some shots and our friend was hit. I was in the second vehicle,” he said.
A Taliban spokesman, Mohammad Hanif, told reporters: “We planted the mine. We fired the gunshots.”
Laghman and other provinces close to the capital Kabul have been the scene of increasing incidents related to the Taliban-led insurgency.
Three senior district officials were killed in a similar attack in the province of Nangarhar earlier in the week.
The governor of eastern Paktia province, Hakim Taniwal, was assassinated in a Taliban-claimed suicide bombing last month, becoming the first governor to be killed since the extremists were ousted from power.
In another incident likely carried out by the Taliban or another Islamic group, police reported that a remote-controlled roadside bomb had killed six Afghan militiamen in Paktia on Friday.
The men were part of a militia force hired by the US-led coalition to patrol volatile areas.
Police in the southern province of Zabul announced meanwhile they had killed three Taliban in a gunfight Friday.
Also in the south, a bomb struck a military vehicle in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, wounding six soldiers lightly, the defence ministry said.
The blast came a day after a suicide car bomb claimed by the Taliban killed an ISAF soldier and eight Afghan civilians in Kandahar city Friday.
ISAF said Saturday its troops had shot dead an Afghan national as he approached a security cordon around the site of the suicide blast.
The man had been acting in “an erratic and threatening manner” and had ignored warnings to stay away, a statement said.
ISAF troops killed another Afghan national near Kabul Friday during a raid in which nine “suspected insurgents” believed to be involved in recent attacks on the capital were captured.
ISAF includes around 31,000 troops from 37 countries trying to stabilise Afghanistan.
