ASADABAD, Aug 27: Five foreign soldiers and two Afghan troops were killed in fresh fighting with Taliban insurgents in eastern and southern Afghanistan, officials said on Monday.

“Three coalition and two Afghan soldiers were killed this morning in an ambush in Kunar province,” said a US military official.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition, Sergeant Dean Welch, said there had been an incident in the east of the country that had caused “several casualties”.

District police chief Abdul Qayoum said that two foreign and seven Afghan soldiers were also injured in the battle.

On Monday, a foreign soldier with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed in a separate ambush in Paktika province, said ISAF spokeswoman Christine Nelson-Chung.

“It was a ground convoy which received small arms fire. One soldier was killed and one was injured,” the spokeswoman said.

Dutch military officials said a sergeant stationed in Uruzgan was killed late on Sunday by a homemade bomb and another Dutch soldier was wounded.

The 30-year-old victim was taking part in an operation to detect the explosives, Dutch Chief of Staff General Dick Berlijn said in the Hague.

The Dutch defence ministry said it suspected that Taliban militants were responsible for the device that caused the soldier’s death.

Nato said that another ISAF soldier had been killed on Sunday in eastern Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, 20 Taliban-linked insurgents — six of them Pakistani nationals — were killed in separate attacks across Afghanistan, according to authorities.

The six Pakistanis were killed in a fire-fight with Afghan security forces in Paktika province, police said. Ten rebels died in Wardak just south of capital Kabul on Sunday, a police commander said.—AFP