June 16, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 30, 1428

KANDAHAR, June 15: Two suicide attackers blew themselves up near Nato convoys in southern Afghanistan Friday, killing five Afghan children, four young men and a Dutch soldier, officials said.

A soldier with the US-led coalition died separately after being wounded in combat in the east of the country, the force said. The nationality of the troop was not announced but most soldiers in the east are Americans.

The coalition also announced that soldiers had killed more than two dozen Taliban in a series of battles across Afghanistan in the past 24 hours. A teenage boy died in the crossfire of one of the battles.

The first suicide blast was a car bomb that ripped through a residential area of the town of Tirin Kot, capital of the southern province of Uruzgan.

Nine Afghan nationals including adults and children have been killed, provincial police chief General Mohammad Qasim said. Five were children, aged around 12, and the rest were young men, he said. “Seven other Afghans have been wounded including one woman,” he said.

Nato's International Security Assistance Force said one of its soldiers was killed and three wounded.

The dead soldier was from The Netherlands and aged about 20, the Dutch ministry of defence said. The soldier was the second Dutch trooper to be killed in Afghanistan where The Netherlands has about 2,200 soldiers with the 37-nation ISAF.

Another suicide bomber struck hours later in Kandahar, about 100 kilometres away.

“Five civilians are wounded in the suicide attack on the Nato convoy,” Kandahar province police chief Ismatullah Alizay said.

Afghan and coalition soldiers raided a Taliban compound in southern Zabul province early Friday. The gunfight that followed “killed a few militants” and a teenager caught in the crossfire, the coalition said.

A search of the compound discovered a Global Positioning System device, medical supplies and a video camera, the coalition said. —AFP