Bombs kill Canadian, US troops in Afghanistan

A US service member and a Canadian soldier died in separate roadside bomb explosions in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday, announcing new deaths from a day that claimed the lives of a total of nine international troops. At the bomb site in Kabul on Friday, Afghan men in traditional tunics peered into the blackened pit in the road - a major thoroughfare connecting the airport to the capital - and mourned the deaths of neighbours and relatives.
US military spokeswoman Captain Elizabeth Mathias said the American died when his patrol struck a bomb planted in the road. She did not provide his name. Canadian Brigadier General Jonathan Vance said Pvt Jonathan Couturier, 23, was killed as he returned from a mission to root out Taliban weapons caches in the southern province of Kandahar.