Roadside bombs killed three Nato service members and a gunman shot dead a prominent local official in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Afghan and international troops are bracing for an expected spring resurgence of Taliban attacks, officials said Sunday. Nato said one service member died in a blast Sunday and two others were killed in an explosion on Saturday.
Earlier, the alliance said that a fourth foreign service member died Saturday when a coalition helicopter crashed in Alasay district of Kapisa province in the east.
It did not provide any further details, or the nationalities of the service members. The deaths brought to 134 the number of Nato troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year.
Afghanistan's spring fighting season is expected to be in full force by the end of this month or early May. Before last winter set in, tens of thousands of US and Nato reinforcements routed the Taliban from their strongholds, captured leading figures and destroyed weapons caches, especially in the east and south.