October 09, 2007	Tuesday	Ramazan 26, 1428

KABUL, Oct 8: An Australian soldier was among 13 people killed in fresh violence in Afghanistan, officials said on Monday, as the head of Nato called for countries to share the burden in the fight against extremism here.

The soldier was the second Australian trooper to be killed in Afghanistan.

The soldier was killed in a bomb blast in the southern province of Uruzgan and another was wounded, the Australian defence department said on its website.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), announced the fatality earlier but gave no details.

The new death takes to 181 the international soldiers to die in Afghanistan this year, most of them in hostile action.

There was also another in a spate of Taliban suicide blasts Monday. The attacker blew himself up near an ISAF convoy moving through the southern town of Lashkar Gah, police said.

“It did not cause any harm to the Nato troops but two men nearby were badly wounded,” Helmand province police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.

Police announced meanwhile that Taliban had attacked a road construction company in Ghazni province’s Qarabagh district late Sunday, killing three guards.

The bodies of two brothers were found in the same area Sunday.

They were “killed by Taliban over spying charges,” district chief Khwaja Ahmad Sidiqi said, adding that the men had not been working for the government.

The interior ministry reported separately that seven “enemy elements” were killed in an operation on Sunday in the province of Wardak, near Kabul.—AFP