A bomb attack on US troops north of the Afghan capital Tuesday killed three soldiers and three Afghan civilians, officials said, as 13 militants were reported killed in air strikes. In other violence linked to Taliban-led insurgency, two Afghan policemen were killed in a separate bomb blast and Nato-led soldiers shot dead a civilian they believed to be a threat, officials said.
The US soldiers were hit in a bomb blast near Bagram, a town about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Kabul, where the United States has its largest military base in Afghanistan. "Three International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service members were killed and one injured after an improvised explosive device attack in eastern Afghanistan this morning," ISAF said in a statement. The US military and another ISAF official said separately that the bomb had hit US troops. They could not confirm Afghan statements that it was a suicide attack.
The Afghan interior ministry said three civilians were killed and two wounded, all of them passers-by, in the incident in Kapisa province about 10 kilometres north-east of Bagram. Afghan Islamic Press news agency reported that the Hezb-e-Islami faction of former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had said it had carried out the attack on the troops.
In another attack Tuesday, a bomb blew up a police vehicle in the southern province of Kandahar and killed two policemen, the interior ministry said. The US military said separately that coalition and Afghan forces had killed 13 militants Tuesday in air strikes in Logar province, which adjoins Kabul. With the insurgency reaching its deadliest last year, about 17,000 extra US troops have begun deploying into Afghanistan to boost international efforts against the insurgents.
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