August 04, 2008	Monday	Sha'aban 1 429

KABUL, Aug 3: A US-led coalition soldier was killed in a bomb attack in Kabul on Sunday and a judge was gunned down in southern Afghanistan, authorities said.

Another soldier was wounded in the bomb blast on the southeastern outskirts of the capital, the coalition said in a statement.

“A coalition service member was killed and another wounded when their convoy struck an IED (improvised explosive device) this morning in Kabul,” it said.

It did not release the nationalities of the soldiers. Most troops in the coalition are from the United States, which has about 32,000 soldiers in Afghanistan to help fight extremist militants, mainly Taliban.

The international forces in the war-wracked country have lost 150 soldiers in Afghanistan this year, most of them killed in attacks. Six were killed on Friday in bombings in the eastern part of the country, where most foreign troops are Americans.

Afghan police said the bomb was planted on a dirt road and appeared to have been remotely detonated. There were no civilian casualties.

In the province of Helmand, gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed a mid-level judge early on Sunday, a government official said, blaming the attack on the Taliban.

Engineer Latif Khan had been a judge in the Gereshk district court, provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmadi said.

Two months ago a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, told an AFP reporter that judges were targets of his group.—AFP