Rome, May 17: Two Italian soldiers were killed and two others were seriously injured on Monday when a bomb hit a NATO military convoy in northwestern Afghanistan, Italy’s foreign ministry told.
The four were in a vehicle that was struck by a roadside bomb, the weapon of choice of Taliban-led insurgents fighting the Western-backed Afghan government and around 130,000 US-led foreign troops in the country.
The attack was about 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) south of the town of Bala Murghab on the border with Turkmenistan, a spokesman for the Italian contingent in Afghanistan said in a television interview.
Italy has 3,300 troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and heads the western regional command headquartered in the city of Herat.
The deaths took to 200 the number of foreign troops to die this year in the Afghan war, according to tally based on that kept by the independent icasualties.org website. A total of 520 died in 2009.
The Taliban were removed from government in Afghanistan a US-led invasion in 2001.
—Agencies