Bomb Blast Kills Nato Service Member In Afghanistan

[News_Editor]

Bomb blast kills NATO service member in Afghanistan < br /> 2012-04-29 01:56:53 GMT+7 (ICT) KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- A coalition service member was killed on late Saturday evening when a roadside bomb exploded in southern Afghanistan, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. Few other details were immediately released.ISAF said one of its service members was killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded in Afghanistan's south. But because the multinational force defers the release of specific details to national authorities, no other details about the incident were released, including the exact location.Earlier on Saturday, another ISAF service member died as a result of a non-battle related injury in southern Afghanistan. Officials did not provide any other details about the service member's cause of death.The nationalities of the service members involved were also not immediately disclosed by ISAF. "It is ISAF policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities," a brief statement said.The deaths on Saturday raise the number of coalition troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year to 132, most of them American and British service members, according to official figures. A British soldier died on Friday after he was shot by an insurgent while on patrol in the Nahr-e-Saraj district of Helmand province, which is located in Afghanistan's south.A total of 566 ISAF troops were killed in Afghanistan in 2011, down from 711 in 2010. A majority of the fallen troops were American and were killed in the country's south, which is plagued by IED attacks on troops and civilians.There are currently more than 130,000 ISAF troops in Afghanistan, including some 90,000 U.S. troops and more than 9,500 British soldiers. U.S. President Barack Obama previously ordered a drawdown of 23,000 U.S. troops later this year, and foreign combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

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