KABUL: Eight soldiers killed in a bombing in southern Afghanistan were Americans, the Pentagon confirmed, in one of the worst single incidents in recent months.
Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said the soldiers were killed by two successive blasts on Thursday in the same location in Shorabak district in Kandahar province.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban, and fighting there in the coming months is likely to prove a key test of foreign forces' ability to hold ground in the south taken from insurgents last year after a troop surge.
Local border police commander Tafseer Khan Khogyani said the attack, which also killed two Afghan policemen, took place as coalition and Afghan forces were on patrol about 20 kilometres (12 miles).
"As they approached a container, explosives that had been placed inside went off, causing a huge explosion," he said.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast, which was initially announced by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
It also brought the death toll of foreign troops in a single day to nine -- earlier Thursday, a NATO helicopter crashed in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan, killing one.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011
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