KANDAHAR  - Eight Afghan security personnel and a foreign soldier were among 10 people killed in a Taliban-style roadside bombing in Kandahar, officials said Sunday.
“Last night there was an IED attack,” Shah Mohammad, the local administration chief of Arghandab district, told AFP.
Government spokesman Zalmai Ayoubi said an ISAF soldier, six Afghan policemen, two Afghan army soldiers and a translator working for the foreign forces were killed in the bombing.
An ISAF serviceman and another Afghan policeman were injured, Ayoubi added. Separately, the NATO-led foreign forces said one service member had died “following an improvised explosive device attack in southern Afghanistan yesterday”.
A spokesman declined to give further details or confirm Afghan casualties.
But a Western security source confirmed to AFP that the Afghan and ISAF reports were referring to the same incident.
In a separate attack in the southwestern province of Farah six Afghan soldiers were killed Sunday and another three wounded when their patrol was ambushed in Bala Buluk district, the Afghan defence ministry said in a statement.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and remains a stronghold of the militants who have been fighting the government of President Hamid Karzai and its Western allies since being ousted from power a decade ago.
The attack came after a US soldier went on a rampage elsewhere in Kandahar province earlier this month.
Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 38, of the US 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, has been formally accused of 17 premeditated murders for the killings - charges that could carry the death penalty.
He is also accused of six counts of assault and attempted murder.
The Taliban have threatened to take revenge for that incident.
Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the insurgents’ preferred weapon in the long-running conflict.