A series of roadside bombings in Afghanistan Wednesday killed eight people, including three Canadian Nato soldiers, in new attacks linked to a growing Taliban insurgency. A district chief in southern Kandahar province said meanwhile police had killed 21 Taliban who attacked late Tuesday.
The governor of Zhari district, Khairuddin, had no proof and said the rebels had taken their dead with them. The three Nato-led International Security Assistance Force soldiers were killed in the volatile south of the country when a bomb tore through their vehicle, ISAF announced in a statement.
Brigadier General Tim Grant later announced that they were Canadian. A spokesman for the Taliban, Yousuf Ahmadi, said insurgents had blown up a foreign forces' vehicle in the province of Helmand. Several of the troops were dead, he claimed.
Another bomb blew up a police vehicle in the eastern province of Khost, killing Qalandar district police chief Ali Mohammad and one of his men, a spokesman for the provincial governor told AFP.
In the southern province of Zabul, a bomb ripped into the vehicle of US-based private security company USPI, killing two guards and wounding a third, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Jalani said.
Another bomb exploded on a road in Ghazni province and killed a man who was cycling home after buying groceries, a district governor said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast but said it had struck a police vehicle.