A bomb planted by insurgents has killed a foreign soldier serving with NATO in southern Afghanistan, the deadliest battlefield in the war against Taliban militants, the alliance said Wednesday, AFP reported.
The International Security Assistance Force released a brief statement that did not give the nationality of the soldier killed on Tuesday. Most of the troops in the south are Americans, British or Canadians.
"An International Security Assistance Force soldier was killed as a result of an improvised explosive device strike by insurgents in southern Afghanistan yesterday," the statement said.
There has been a spate of deadly attacks against the mostly Western ISAF in recent days as a Taliban-led insurgency picks up pace.
A US soldier in the 40-nation force was killed with an interpreter in a bomb strike in the eastern province of Paktya on Tuesday. Four US soldiers were killed in two bomb blasts in Wardak province near Kabul on Monday.
The death reported Wednesday would take to 123 the number of foreign soldiers to lose their lives in Afghanistan so far this year, most of them in attacks, according to a tally maintained by the icasualties.org website.
ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Richard Blanchette said in the statement that attacks such as the latest insurgent bomb blast would not thwart the "combined will of the nations committed to bring stability" to Afghanistan.
ISAF, which numbers just over 58,000 troops, is deployed under a UN mandate to help fragile post-Taliban. It works alongside a US-led coalition, called Operation Enduring Freedom, that removed the Taliban regime in 2001.