Posted on 11/18/2005 6:49:27 AM PST by knighthawk
An explosion on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, has killed a Portuguese peacekeeper with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and wounded three others.
"One ISAF soldier was killed and three injured, one of them seriously, by an explosion in Bagrami district of Kabul," ISAF spokesman Major Andy Elmes said.
"We are still trying to determine whether it's a mine, an IED (improvised explosive device) or something els."
He says the blast was in Da Yaqoob village on the outskirts of the capital.
The Portuguese Defence Ministry in Lisbon says the four soldiers were in a vehicle that exploded while on patrol.
Portuguese soldiers in a second vehicle, which was part of the same patrol, were not hurt.
A German soldier with ISAF was killed in the capital on Monday in one of two suicide attacks launched at convoys of the peacekeeping force.
Six Afghans were also killed in the attacks.
A British soldier with ISAF was killed in an ambush in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on October 29.
The nearly 10,000-strong ISAF force patrols Kabul and the northern and western parts of Afghanistan, while a US-led coalition of nearly 20,000 troops is based mainly in the more volatile south and east.
ISAF has been in Afghanistan since late 2001, when the fundamentalist Taliban regime was toppled in a US-led invasion.
It came under NATO control in 2003 and includes troops from 37 countries, with nearly 200 of them from Portugal.
Ping
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