Kabul, February 08: A US-led soldier has been killed in a bomb blast in southern Afghanistan, bringing the number of the foreign troops killed in the war-torn country to almost 40 in 2011.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) said Tuesday a homemade bomb took the serviceman’s life. The Western military alliance gave no further detail about the Tuesday fatality.
Attacks on US-led foreign forces have been on the rise in the war-ravaged country. Improvised explosive devices have proven to be the weapon of choice in most attacks.
Earlier on Monday, a powerful roadside bomb explosion killed two US-led foreign soldiers and an Afghan interpreter in Kandahar province in the troubled south.
The attack took place at the customs office. Two other foreign soldiers were also wounded in the attack.
Last year was the bloodiest year for foreign forces in the war-wrecked country, with at least 711 foreign troops killed.
Violence has picked up in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001, with civilian and military casualties hitting record levels last year.
The US-led war has caused the deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians directly from insurgent and foreign military action, as well as the deaths of possibly tens of thousands of Afghan civilians indirectly as a consequence of displacement, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, crime and lawlessness resulting from the war.
A 46-page report on Afghanistan from the United Nations peacekeeping mission issued in 2010 said Afghanistan’s civilian casualties are spiraling, up 31 percent on the first six months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009.
UN human rights workers recorded 1,271 civilian deaths over the period and 1,997 injuries. Of that total of 3,268 insurgent forces were responsible for 2,477 casualties, while NATO and Afghan government forces accounted for 386.
——–Agencies