KHOST (Afghanistan), Feb 10: A bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday killed two soldiers from the Nato-led force helping to fight an escalating Taliban-led insurgency, a military spokeswoman said.

The blast, similar to scores of others orchestrated by the Taliban against security forces, was on the outskirts of the eastern town of Khost on a road leading to the main US base in eastern Afghanistan, an AFP reporter said.

“Two alliance soldiers were killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) and one wounded,” Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Neilson-Green, a spokeswoman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told AFP.

She could not disclose the nationalities of those killed in the blast but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are US nationals.

Neilson-Green said it was not immediately clear what kind of device caused the explosion. Khost has seen a rash of suicide attacks over the past few months, most claimed by the Taliban.

Afghan police confirmed the blast and also said the cause was not immediately clear.

“It was against a coalition convoy,” provincial police chief Abdul Qayoum Baqizoi told AFP.