Two improvised explosive devices (IED) killed five soldiers from Nato-led forces and one civilian in Afghanistan on Friday, the Nato force said in a statement, and a young suicide bomber killed three civilians in the south.
Taliban militants have been increasingly active this year, targeting foreign and Afghan military convoys with roadside bombs and suicide attacks, and a group of aid agencies said today the violence had reached its highest level since 2001.
The number of insurgent attacks was greater in both May and June than in any month since US-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, and more than 260 civilians were killed in July alone, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said.
Four soldiers of Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and one civilian were killed by an IED in the northwestern province of Kunar on Friday, the ISAF said in a statement. It does not release the nationality of dead soldiers but most of the soldiers in Kunar are American.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had used a remote-controlled roadside bomb.
A fifth ISAF soldier was also killed by an IED today in the eastern province of Khost, the ISAF said in a separate statement. Most of the troops stationed in the eastern province bordering Pakistan are also American.
"This is a very difficult time right now, and our sincere condolences and sympathies are with the family and friends of the brave soldiers and civilian who died," the ISAF spokesman, Captain Mark Windsor, said in the statement.
In another incident, a suicide bomber killed three civilians in Zaranj district in the southern province of Nimroz on Friday, district police chief Ayub Badakhshi said.
Reuters