Three Nato troops and 21 Taliban killed in Afghanistan

A roadside bomb killed three Canadian Nato soldiers in southern Afghanistan today.

Clashes and airstrikes also left 21 suspected Taliban militants dead, officials said.

Afghanistan is experiencing a burst of violence that shows the Taliban unbowed more than five years after the hardline militia’s ousting, despite the deaths of thousands of militants.

The Canadian troops, serving with the Nato-led forces, died when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device, said Major General Tim Grant, the head of Canadian forces in the country.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported spokesman for the Taliban, said its fighters hit the vehicle with a remote-controlled bomb in the Nad Ali district of Helmand province.

Ahmadi’s claim could not be verified independently.

In neighbouring Kandahar province, Nato and Afghan troops clashed with militants and called in airstrikes, killing 21 suspected Taliban, an official said.

The militants were killed during a six-hour battle in Zhari district, local mayor Khairudin Achakzai said.

The bodies were found on the battlefield along with weapons and ammunition, he said.

Also in Kandahar, police clashed with insurgents and retook control of the remote Miya Nishin district in Kandahar province late yesterday – a day after militants had overrun it, said Esmatullah Alizai, the provincial police chief.

However, hours later, Alizai said his forces lost Ghorak district in the same province to the militants.

Kandahar borders mountainous Uruzgan, where fierce fighting between Taliban militants and Afghan and Nato forces since Saturday has reportedly left more than 100 people dead, including dozens of civilians.

Nato said it faced a seasonal upsurge in militant operations, but dismissed recent suicide and bomb attacks as “militarily insignificant”.

“We find ourselves in the midst of the so-called fighting season, when what we had predicted is taking place: an increase in suicide bombings and more desperate attempts by the enemies of peace and stability to present the illusion that they are stronger than they are,” said Lt Col Maria Carl, spokeswoman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force.

In other violence, assailants ambushed a UN convoy on the main Kabul-Kandahar highway, killing two Afghan guards, wounding another and damaging two vehicles, said Jailani Khan, highway police chief for Zabul province.

In the eastern province of Khost, gunmen opened fire on people praying in a mosque, killing three and wounding four more, said Wazir Pacha, a provincial police spokesman.

Pacha said the assailants fled from the mosque in the village of Ismail Kheil and that their motive remained unknown.

Violence has claimed a total of about 2,400 lives, including civilians, militants and troops, so far this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western military and Afghan officials.