Seven NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan

[David]

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (AFP) – Seven ISAF soldiers were killed in insurgent attacks in Afghanistan Monday as the Taliban announced it would resist a US Marine assault on its strongholds with a guerrilla campaign.

Four US soldiers, serving in NATO's International Security Assistance Force, were killed when a bomb blew up their vehicle as they drove over a bridge in the northern province of Kunduz, international and Afghan officials said.

"I can confirm that four ISAF soldiers were killed," an ISAF officer said on condition of anonymity. They died "due to an improvised bomb explosion in northern Afghanistan".

He would not comment on their nationalities but Afghan officials and the defence ministry of Germany, which is in charge of ISAF in the north, said they were US nationals.

"We have learnt today that four US soldiers were killed in the Kunduz region by an IED (improvised explosive device)," ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe told a press conference in Berlin.

The men were training the Afghan police, Kunduz intelligence chief General Abdul Majid Azimi told AFP.

Kunduz police chief Abdul Razaq Yaqoubi said two elderly Afghan men who were passing by were also killed and two children were wounded.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said his militia was responsible. The radical Islamist Hezb-i-Islami faction is also active in Kunduz, which has recently seen a spike in attacks by insurgents.

ISAF announced separately that another two of its soldiers were killed by an bomb in southern Afghanistan, but it gave no further details, including their nationalities.

However, the attack was not in Helmand province where thousands of US and British troops have moved into insurgent strongholds in the past weeks, a spokesman said.

Another ISAF soldier "died of injuries sustained as a result of an insurgent attack" in eastern Afghanistan, ISAF said separately, giving no details.

Early Monday, a suicide attacker blew up an explosives-filled minivan outside a massive ISAF base outside the southern city of Kandahar.

It killed two Afghan truck drivers and wounded 11 other Afghans, including two soldiers, army corps commander General Shair Mohammad Zazai told AFP.

The blast was about 30 metres (100 feet) from an outer entrance to Kandahar Air Field and among vehicles queued up at a checkpoint on a road into Kandahar, about 10 kilometres (six miles) outside the city.

The base is a vast complex that houses thousands of foreign troops including some of the reinforcements sent by US President Barack Obama as part of a sweeping new war strategy.

Another Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said his militia was responsible.

The hardline Islamists have carried out a wave of suicide bombings in the last four years in a growing campaign seeking to bring down the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and kick out foreign troops.

Last week, about 4,000 Marines were airlifted into Taliban areas in Kandahar's adjacent Helmand province in one of the biggest operations over the past eight years and part of Washington's new strategy against the insurgency.

Thousands of British troops meanwhile are carrying out a similar operation around the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Their aim is to drive out the insurgents and establish security so Afghans can vote in presidential and provincial council elections on August 20, a key test of a push towards democracy.

Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman, announced Monday a new Taliban counter-offensive in the opium-producing province which officials say contributes to the costs of running the insurgency.

Operation Foladi Jal, Pashtu for "iron net," would teach the Marines a lesson "so they will never again dare to come into our areas", he told AFP by telephone from an unknown location, threatening "mines and guerrilla attacks".

The Marines and about 650 Afghan forces in Operation Khanjar (dagger) have reported little resistance, except in one area where officers have reported days of heavy fighting with one Marine killed.

Five British soldiers have been killed in Helmand in the past week, four of them by bombs.