Five US troops wounded in Afghan blast

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Five U.S. soldiers were
wounded in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan on Saturday
while, in a separate incident, a suicide bomber blew himself up
in an attack on Canadian troops, military officials said.

No Canadian or Afghan army troops were hurt in the attack
in Kandahar province but Afghan soldiers killed a man on a
motorbike, mistaking him for another attacker, an Afghan
commander said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the third suicide
attack in three days. A Canadian soldier and at least seven
passers-by were wounded in the earlier attacks.

Violence in Afghanistan has intensified in recent days
since Taliban insurgents said they launched a spring offensive
in their campaign to oust foreign troops and defeat the
Western-backed government.

The U.S. troops were wounded while on patrol in the Peche
valley of eastern Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan
and the scene of repeated clashes between insurgents and U.S.
and Afghan government troops.

A roadside bomb struck their armored vehicle, U.S. military
spokesman Lieutenant Mike Cody said.

The five wounded men were evacuated to the main U.S.
military base at Bagram, north of Kabul, he said. He did not
know their condition.

Insurgents attacked the convoy after the blast and one
suspected insurgent was detained, he added.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Kunar
last month. Sixteen U.S. troops were killed in the province
last June when insurgents shot down their helicopter with a
rocket-propelled grenade.

TALIBAN CLAIM

A Taliban spokesman said Taliban fighters had carried out
the third suicide attack in Kandahr in as many days.

Despite the rising violence, the United States is planning
to trim its force of more than 18,000 troops in Afghanistan by
several thousand, as NATO forces take over responsibilities in
the dangerous south, and later the east.

NATO is capable of taking over peacekeeping duties across
all of Afghanistan as early as August if member nations want,
the alliance’s top commander of operations said on Friday.

The spate of suicide attacks has unnerved public opinion
over the planned move into more dangerous areas in several
European NATO countries.

Canada has 2,300 soldiers in Kandahar, where it commands a
multinational task force. As casualties have mounted some
Canadians have begun questioning the mission and demanding a
debate in parliament.

In a separate incident, the head of provincial council in
the northeastern province of Takhar was killed by unidentified
gunmen who raided his house on Saturday, an interior ministry
official said. Sayed Sadiq, a former factional commander, was
elected to the province’s council in September.

Militants are not known to be active in the province and
some residents speculated he might have been killed as a result
of a factional feud.

The interior ministry said it was investigating.