KABUL (AFP) — Three US-led coalition soldiers were killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the force said, taking to 17 the number of international troops to die in the country this month.
The coalition did not give the nationalities of the soldiers or specify where they were killed in southern Afghanistan, which has seen some of the most violent attacks in a Taliban-led insurgency that has gained pace this year.
"Three coalition service members were killed in an explosion while on a dismounted patrol in southern Afghanistan today," it said in a statement that gave no other details.
The deaths took to 161 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this year, most of them in attacks, notably bombings.
The months of May, June and July saw more foreign troops killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
Of the 17 foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this month, at least 10 of them were US nationals, according to an AFP tally. Three soldiers -- a Briton, a Canadian and a Latvian -- died in separate incidents on Monday.
The coalition, which works alongside a NATO-led force, is made up mostly of US soldiers who account for around half of the nearly 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan to help the government fight a Taliban-led insurgency.
Attacks have increased in recent weeks, with fighting usually mounting during the summer months, but military officials also say upheaval in Pakistan is seeing more militants enter Afghanistan, especially foreigners.
The interior ministry said separately that two weeks of heavy fighting in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand had left more than 20 policemen dead.
Police on Thursday pulled back from two posts in Helmand's Nad Ali district under pressure from Taliban attacks launched two weeks ago, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.
"In the past two weeks we've lost 15 policemen in fighting with Taliban in Nad Ali. This morning we had to withdraw from two posts," he said.
The Taliban claimed to have driven police out of the district centre and said they had torched government buildings in the area.
Six other policemen were killed and about 10 others were wounded in Ghorak district in neighbouring Kandahar province, also under attack by Taliban rebels, Bashary said.
"The fighting in both places continues," Bashary said.
Another police officer was meanwhile killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb -- similar to those used by Taliban militants -- struck the motorcade of a top police official in Logar province, just south of Kabul.
Provincial police chief Ghulam Mustafa escaped unharmed from the attack, which came one day after Taliban militants killed three Western female aid workers in an ambush in Logar.
The three employees of the International Rescue Committee were killed along with their driver when rebels opened fire on their vehicle on a road near the provincial capital Pul-i-Alam.
The Taliban said its men had carried out the attack, but said those killed were female soldiers.
The extremists launched an insurgency soon after being ousted from government in late 2001 by a US-led coalition.
The violence has mounted year by year, with about 50 percent more unrest in some areas this year as compared with 2007, according to military and civilian officials.
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