A NATO soldier and nine Afghan civilians were killed and a dozen more wounded in separate blasts and roadside attacks in southern Afghanistan, official said Thursday, according to dpa. The NATO soldiers were on a military patrol Wednesday in Logar province when attacked, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)said in a statement. The injured soldiers were evacuated to a military hospital for treatment, said the statement, but did not disclose the nationalities of the soldiers. Nine civilians were killed and eight wounded in two separate remote-controlled roadside blasts in Kandahar province on Thursday morning, Sayed Agha Saqib, provincial police chief said. The first mine blew up a civilian vehicle in an area in Maroof district of the province, Saqib said, adding: "As the people gathered to help with evacuation of victims, the second blast took place, killing a total number of nine people and wounding eight others." The attack took place on the highway between Spin Boldak district and Kandahar city, the road, which is frequently used by Afghan and foreign forces. He blamed the Taliban militants, who have waged a bloody insurgency against Afghan and more than 50,000 international forces stationed in the country, responsible for the attack. Taliban insurgents, whose regime was toppled in a US-led military invasion in late 2001, have recently largely relied on the use of roadside and suicide attacks, both tactics are widely believed to have been copied from Iraqi insurgents.
