Twenty-four people including a Nato soldier were killed in a bloody weekend of Taliban-linked violence across insurgency-hit Afghanistan, officials said Sunday. The soldier with the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed Sunday while escorting a convoy in southern Afghanistan, the force said.
He died from wounds suffered when the convoy was hit by a bomb, which was followed by a firefight with militants, an ISAF spokeswoman told AFP. "There was an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), then there was a firefight. He was injured and later died from his wounds.
It was not known if he sustained the wounds from the IED or the gunshots," the spokeswoman said. Neither the soldier's nationality nor the location of the incident was disclosed. His death brings to 136 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP count.
Two policemen were killed and two injured when their patrol vehicle was caught in a roadside bomb explosion outside the southern city of Ghazni on Saturday, a police official said. Also in Ghazni, where the Taliban have been holding 19 South Koreans hostage for nearly a month, two members of the hard-line militia were killed in a firefight.