Car bomb wounds five NATO soldiers in southern Afghanistan


dpa German Press Agency
Published: Saturday January 20, 2007

Kabul- Five NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers were wounded when a car filled with explosive went off near their convoy in southern Afghanistan, the military said on Saturday. Soon after the blast, suspected Taliban militants opened fire on their convoy in southern Uruzgan province on early Friday afternoon, an ISAF spokesperson in Kabul told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The spokeswoman, who refused to be named as she was not authorized to speak to the press, said that the wounded soldiers were evacuated to an ISAF hospital in the region but could not elaborate on their condition.

She did not identify the name or nationalities of the wounded soldiers, nor did she say if there were any casualties inflicted on the Taliban side.

Meanwhile a roadside bomb exploded near an ISAF convoy in Zherai district of southern Kandahar province on Saturday. The incident damaged a military vehicle but the soldiers escaped the blast unharmed, the ISAF spokesperson said.

The violence this year has already left over 200 people dead. Last year, with over 4,000 people killed, most of them insurgents, marked the deadliest year since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency