Kabul - A Canadian soldier with NATO-led forces was killed and three others were wounded in a roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan, while two policemen and three suspected Taliban militants were killed elsewhere in the country, officials said Thursday. The Canadian soldiers were travelling in a military vehicle on Wednesday when it was struck by a roadside bomb in Shah Walikot district of southern Kandahar province, the Canadian Defence Ministry said in a statement.
The statement said the three wounded soldiers were evacuated to a hospital at Kandahar airfield, where some 2,500 Canadian soldiers are stationed, and were reported to be in good condition.
"Despite our grief, we will continue our mission to help the Afghan government and the Afghan national security forces bring security and stability to their people," the statement added.
NATO-led international forces in Kabul also confirmed the incident in a statement.
The Taliban took responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on their website, saying their fighters detonated the roadside mine with a remote-controlled device.
Taliban militants rely heavily on the use of roadside and suicide attacks as part of their insurgency. The militants carried out around 2,000 roadside bombings in 2008, which was almost double the number of roadside attacks in 2007.
Separately, two police officers and two suspected Taliban insurgents were killed after the militants attacked a police checkpoint in Khash Rood district of western Nimruz province on Wednesday, said Abdul Jabar Purdeli, the provincial police chief.
In another incident on Wednesday, Afghan police clashed with a group of Taliban fighters in Tarin Kot, the capital city of Uruzgan province, killing one insurgent and detaining four others, Gholab Khan Wardak, the provincial police security chief said.
He said one police officer was wounded in the four-hour gunbattle, while police seized three machine guns and a pistol from the militants.
The clashes came a day after Afghan and US-led military officials confirmed the deaths of 50 insurgents and at least a dozen Afghan civilians in separate incidents in the southern and eastern regions.
Taliban militants, who were driven from power in late 2001, have waged a bloody insurgency against Afghan forces and some 70,000 international troops deployed to the country from 41 nations.
The militants have steadily gained power over the past three years and extended their writ to larger swathes of the country.
The US government has announced it will nearly double its military forces in Afghanistan by sending up to 30,000 extra troops in 2009 to contain the insurgency.
