Kandahar: Bomb blasts struck two NATO convoys in Afghanistan, wounding four foreign soldiers, while five civilians were killed in separate extremist-linked unrest, officials have said.

In an attack claimed by Taliban insurgents, a suicide car bomb struck a Canadian armoured vehicle driving through the southern city of Kandahar, the Canadian military said yesterday.

An Afghan man was killed, his body badly burned by the blast, which also set a house alight, and at least one civilian was wounded, witnesses and officials said.

A Canadian soldier with NATO s International Security Assistance Force was also injured, said ISAF spokesman Captain Mark Gough.

"It was a suicide car bomb attack against a Canadian convoy.... One military vehicle was damaged," said another ISAF spokesman, Captain Fraser Clark.

The Taliban, an Islamic militant group that was in government in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001,confirmed it was behind the blast -- similar to scores of others carried out by the insurgents.

A roadside bomb, another favoured Taliban weapon, meanwhile struck a vehicle containing Romanian troops also serving with the ISAF, wounding three of them, the Romanian defence ministry said in Bucharest.

The soldiers were hit on a road linking Kandahar to neighbouring Zabul province, it said, adding the wounded were in a stable condition.

ISAF reported meanwhile that two Afghan women and two children were killed Tuesday when troops returned fire at insurgents who had attacked them in southern Afghanistan.

Source : PTI