JALALABAD, Afghanistan: Gunmen attacked an oil tanker in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, causing a fire that killed the vehicle’s driver and six people in a minivan passing by, a provincial official said.
The tanker was travelling from Jalalabad to Kabul when it was attacked, Laghman provincial spokesman Abdul Wakil Atak said.
The driver died when the tanker burst into flames, which also engulfed the minivan, killing all 6 people on board, the spokesman said, blaming the attack on extremist Taliban leading a growing insurgency in the war-ravaged nation.
Taliban and other militants are regularly blamed for attacking vehicles transporting oil and other supplies to international soldiers in Afghanistan via Pakistan.
A Nato soldier was killed in fighting in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, the alliance’s International Security Assistance Force said.
ISAF did not give the nationality of the soldier slain in Khost province, which adjoins Pakistan, or how they died.
“One ISAF soldier was killed during fighting in Khost province earlier today,” it said in a statement.
The force is made up of about 53,000 soldiers from 40 different nations. Most of the troops in eastern Afghanistan are from the US, which has about 36,000 soldiers here in ISAF and a separate US-led coalition.
The latest death takes to 137 the number of international soldiers who have lost their lives in Afghanistan this year, most of them in combat with insurgents, including from the Taliban.-Agencies |
