Kabul - Four US-led coalition soldiers and an Afghan national were killed in a roadside bomb blast in eastern Afghanistan Wednesday as US Defence Secretary Robert Gates visited the war-torn country. The foreign soldiers' deaths were confirmed in a statement issued by US military authorities in Bagram, the main US base in the country, but did not disclose the nationality of the deceased soldiers or where exactly the bombing took place.
Most of the troops serving under the coalition banner are from the United States.
Taliban militants, meanwhile, said in a statement posted on their website that they attacked a US tank Wednesday in the Khoshamand district of the south-eastern province of Paktika with a roadside mine, killing five US soldiers and destroying their vehicle.
It was not immediately clear if the Taliban and the US forces were referring to the same incident.
Gates arrived in Kabul late Tuesday and held talks Wednesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in his presidential palace and coalition commanders to discuss the ongoing war against the resurgent Taliban.
With more than three months left in 2008, the year has already been the bloodiest for US forces since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001 in a US-led invasion. The US military death toll has surpassed last year's record of 111.
More than 33,000 US troops are in the country serving with NATO-led forces and under a separate coalition banner led by American generals. The US government recently announced that it would send an additional 4,500 soldiers to the country by January.
However, NATO's top general in Afghanistan, David McKiernan, has said he needed 10,000 extra international troops to fight the insurgents, who have grown in numbers recently.
The Taliban - which lost power after a US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States - relies heavily on the use of suicide and roadside bombings in its campaign to bring down the Western-backed Afghan government.
In a separate incident, the coalition said it killed two militants and detained two others Tuesday in the Andar district of the southern province of Ghazni.
Multiple AK-47s, three rocket-propelled grenades, a rocket launcher, multiple hand grenades, homemade bomb-making material and military-style clothing was found during a search of the targeted compound, the statement said.
Also on Tuesday in Muqur, another district in Ghazni province, Afghan army forces killed two militants and arrested 25 other suspected militants, the Defence Ministry said.
An Afghan soldier was killed and another wounded Tuesday in a Taliban attack in Wardak, a province close to Kabul, the statement said.
More than 4,000 people - mostly insurgents but including more than 200 international soldiers - have been killed in Afghan clashes so far this year.
