Two bombs exploded in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Friday evening, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 50, officials said. "One blast was a vehicle IED (improvised explosive device)," Javed Faisal, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, told AFP. "Seven people are dead and more than 50 are wounded, most of them civilians." Faisal said that the target of the attack appeared to be police and army vehicles but that many of those injured were civilians who were gathered in a popular public area of the city at the end of the Friday holiday.

A roadside bomb killed four US soldiers in south Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said, the latest fatalities for the NATO-led coalition which is winding down after 12 years of fighting. The soldiers died in the volatile province of Kandahar, where five US troops were killed by a similar improvised explosive device targeting a vehicle on May 4. Kandahar is a hotbed of insurgent activity, with large areas under the control of Taliban militants who were ousted from power in Kabul in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

A roadside bomb killed five US troops in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Saturday, provincial officials said. "Five American soldiers were killed at about noon when their armoured vehicle hit a powerful roadside mine in Maiwand district," Kandahar police chief General Abdul Razeq told AFP. str-us/bgs/lm

Kabul, Mar 12 (EFE).- Five NATO soldiers died in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan, the international coalition said Tuesday, while the Taliban have already claimed responsibility. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a communique that the cause of the crash is being investigated, though "everything seems to indicate there was no insurgent activity in the area" when the accident occurred. As is usual in such cases, the communique did not specify the exact location of the crash nor the nationality of the victims.