Five Afghan soldiers and four suspected Taleban militants have been killed in two separate explosions in southern Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.
Five Afghan soldiers were killed and three injured on Saturday in an attack by Taleban militants in Sharawak district near the border with Pakistan, military commander of the province, General Khan Mohammad, said.
An unknown number of attackers had crossed the border to carry out their operation and escaped back into Pakistan later, the general said.
In the neighbouring southern province of Helmand four suspected Taleban were killed when the bomb they were building exploded as they worked on it.
"Yesterday, four Taleban, who were preparing a bomb, a remote-controlled bomb in a pressure cooker, were killed when the bomb went off," Helmand police chief Abdul Rahman Sabir said on Saturday.
"The investigation is going on. We have the bodies but we don't know yet whether they are all Afghans; we will be able to tell you their identity after we finish the investigation."
The explosion destroyed the room in which the men were working in the Sangin district of the province, some 490 kilometres (304 miles) from the capital Kabul.