Two suicide attackers blew themselves up near Nato convoys in southern Afghanistan Friday, killing five Afghan children, four young men and a Dutch soldier, officials said. A soldier with the US-led coalition died separately after being wounded in combat in the east of the country, the force said.
The nationality of the troop was not announced but most soldiers in the east are Americans. The coalition also announced that soldiers had killed more than two dozen Taliban in a series of battles across Afghanistan in the past 24 hours. A teenage boy died in the crossfire of one of the battles.
The first suicide blast was a car bomb that ripped through a residential area of the town of Tirin Kot, capital of the southern province of Uruzgan. Nato's International Security Assistance Force said one of its soldiers was killed and three wounded.
The dead soldier was from The Netherlands and aged about 20, the Dutch ministry of defence said. Another suicide bomber struck hours later in the city of Kandahar, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) away. "Five civilians are wounded in the suicide attack on the Nato convoy," Kandahar province police chief Ismatullah Alizay told AFP.