کور / تازه خبرونه / Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan blast

Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan blast


A Canadian soldier serving with the NATO-led force in Afghanistan was killed when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, military officials said Saturday.

The soldier’s armoured vehicle hit “what we suspect to be an improvised explosive device” in Kandahar province on Friday, the Canadian defence ministry said in a statement.

Canada has 2,500 troops in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), most of them in Kandahar province, one of the worst areas hit by unrest linked to an insurgency led by the extremist Taliban movement.

ISAF said the soldier “died Friday from injuries sustained in an explosion during a patrol in southern Afghanistan.”

The latest casualty brought to 37 the number of foreign troops who have died this year in Afghanistan.

More than 70,000 international troops, most of them serving under the UN-mandated ISAF, are deployed in Afghanistan to fight back a Taliban-led insurgency plaguing the south and east of the country.

Canada had been pressing its NATO allies to commit 1,000 additional troops to the war-torn south, as well as drones and medium-lift helicopters for use by Canadian troops as a condition of its continued deployment until 2011.

France and the United States said they would send troop reinforcements.