Kabul, August 29: A suicide bomber targeted a US military convoy in southern Afghanistan Saturday, killing one soldier and one civilian, and wounding 24 other people, a police chief said.
The attack occurred in the main market of Shah Joy, a district in southern province of Zabul Saturday morning when a convoy of US forces was passing by the area, Abdul Rahman Sarjan, the provincial police chief, told the German Press Agency dpa.
“One civilian was martyred and 21 others were wounded,” he said, adding that a US soldier was also killed and three others were wounded.
A US spokeswoman in Bagram, the main US military base in Afghanistan, confirmed the attack, but could not give any figures for their casualties.
The incident came a day after another US soldier was killed in a roadside bomb explosion in eastern Afghanistan, the NATO military alliance said in a statement late Friday.
With around 45 soldiers killed, August has become the deadliest month for US forces since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001. There are nearly 70,000 US troops in Afghanistan
The southern and eastern regions are the main areas for Taliban insurgents.
On Tuesday an explosion triggered by a truck laden with explosives killed 43 Afghans and wounded more than 60 others in the southern province of Kandahar, which was once the main stronghold for Taliban militants.
—-Agencies