Five American soldiers were killed by a bomb in Afghanistan Thursday, as the Taliban rejected claims that the fighters who shot down a US helicopter last week had perished in a Nato air strike. The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said only that those killed in the blast in southern Afghanistan were the latest victims of the Taliban insurgency's increasing use of crude, home-made bombs.
A Pentagon spokesman in Washington confirmed that all five dead were American troops. The deaths come a week after the Taliban shot down a US Chinook helicopter, killing 38 people including 30 Americans - the biggest loss of US life in a single incident since the 2001 invasion. At least 387 coalition soldiers have now been killed in Afghanistan so far this year, compared to 711 deaths in 2010, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by independent website icasualties.org.
South Afghanistan is the Taliban's heartland and was the focus of a US troop surge from 2010 that commanders say has made significant progress. But the militia still frequently strike troops on foot patrol or travelling in armoured vehicles with crudely-assembled improvised explosive devices (IEDs). From April to June, 3,485 IEDs exploded or were found in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon, up 14 percent from the same period last year.
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