Kabul, April 30: An improvised explosive device killed a soldier serving with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, the military announced Friday.
The death occurred in southern Afghanistan, but NATO did not specify the soldier’s nationality, in line with policy.
A total of 172 foreign soldiers have died in the country this year.
In 2009, according to an AFP tally using data from icasualties.org, 520 foreign soldiers died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, making it the deadliest year for them since the war began in 2001.
NATO and the United States are throwing thousands of extra troops into Afghanistan, where their military deployment is set to peak at 150,000 in August under a strategy designed to bring a swift end to the conflict.
Most of the extra troops are deploying in the south, the heartland of the Taliban-led insurgency and the focus of the US-led fight to flush the militants from Kandahar and Helmand provinces.
More than two thirds of the international force in Afghanistan are from the United States.
—Agencies