4 U.S. Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan

A roadside bomb in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan killed four US soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Sunday.

Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, ISAF spokesman in Afghanistan, speaking in the Afghan capital Kabul, confirmed that four US soldiers had died in the attack, which was carried out with an improvised explosive device (IED).

Blanchette claimed, nevertheless, that progress was being made in Nangarhar province and that ISAF remains "hopeful for the future".

Most of the troops in the country's east are American, although other countries also participate in operations there.

The Taliban regularly use roadside bombs against Afghan and foreign troops. Last year the number of such attacks rose by 30 percent, according to NATO figures.

Bombings and clashes elsewhere in the country on Sunday killed 14 other people, according to officials.

The centre of the Taliban insurgency is in southern Afghanistan, where a roadside bomb hit a convoy carrying the mayor of Kandahar city on Sunday, killing a civilian and wounding two others, according to a police spokesman. The mayor survived the blast.

Separately, a suicide bomber on foot in the capital of Kabul killed two Afghan civilians, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

The bomber, who had been targeting a NATO patrol, also wounded 14 other civilians, the Interior Ministry said. No foreign troops were wounded or killed, the statement said.

In Kandahar's Maywand district, the US coalition and Afghan special forces conducting a raid in Kandahar's Maywand district, aimed at a network supporting foreign fighters in the area, killed five militants a US military statement said.

The Taliban-led insurgency has recently made a comeback in the last three years after what appeared to be an initial defeat following the US invasion in 2001.

Thousands of new American troops are joining British, Canadian and Dutch forces in the region this year, trying to reverse Taliban gains and help extend the governance in remote parts of the country.