KABUL, Jan 29: An explosion near an ammunition dump in southern Afghanistan killed seven US soldiers and wounded three others on Thursday, the US army said.

US central command said in a statement the soldiers were killed when working near an arms cache in the southern province of Ghazni on Thursday afternoon. An interpreter was also injured and another soldier was missing, the statement said.

"Everything else is under investigation, they'll be wanting to establish exactly what happened," said Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Williams at Central Command in Florida.

The wounded soldiers were evacuated to a US field hospital at Bagram air base near Kabul, the statement said. The US military leads a 12,000-strong force in Afghanistan hunting Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants after a US-led campaign ousted the Taliban in 2001.-Reuters