Kabul: A bomb tore through a military patrol in southern Afghanistan today, killing three US troops, while a suicide attack at a fruit market killed six Afghans, authorities said.

The blasts came as the country braced for another tough year against an insurgency led by the extremist Taliban but which also sees attacks by other radical factions and groups linked to the massive opium and heroin trade.

The bombing of the patrol from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force took to 10 the number of foreign troops killed here so far this year. Two US troops were killed in a Taliban suicide attack yesterday.

"They were on a mounted patrol where they hit an IED (improvised explosive device)," said US military spokesman Colonel Jerry O Hara.

"Three US soldiers were killed and one was wounded."

The blast occurred along Highway One, an often-attacked road linking the volatile south with the capital Kabul.

All of the other soldiers to die in Afghanistan this year -- Australian, British, Canadian and US nationals -- were also killed in the south, where insurgents hold sway in several districts.

In another attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a fruit market in the small southwestern town of Zaranj on the border with Iran, police said.

He walked up to the deputy police operations chief for Nimroz province, who was shopping in the market, and then detonated his explosives, provincial police chief Abdul Jabar Pordili told AFP.
Source : PTI