A US and a British soldier were gunned down in Afghanistan on Saturday in a deadly series of attacks that claimed 23 lives, including those of 14 suspected Taliban insurgents, officials said.
The US soldier was killed on patrol on the border with Pakistan in the east of the insurgency-hit country, while the British trooper was shot dead in an ambush in the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, military officials said.
The militants were killed by US-led coalition and Afghan troops, supported by attack helicopters and aircraft, in battles on Thursday and Friday in which an Afghan soldier also died, the coalition said.
Thirteen were shot dead in insurgency-hit Uruzgan Province, where the Afghan soldier was killed, it said in a statement.
A US soldier and an Afghan trooper were wounded but were in stable condition.
US troops killed another militant in eastern Paktika Province on Friday when he and others were spotted allegedly trying to plant a bomb, the coalition said. Two others were captured and handed to Afghan police.
The US soldier attacked on the volatile border with Pakistan became the 87th US troop to be killed this year in the US-led operation to root out militants linked to the ousted Taliban government, according to an AFP tally. More than 50 died in hostile fire.
More than 200 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the US invaded in 2001 to remove the Taliban from power after they failed to hand over their ally Osama bin Laden for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Besides the coalition force of about 20,000 troops mainly based in southern and eastern Afghanistan, a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) of about 10,000 soldiers patrols the capital and northern and western regions.
British soldiers with ISAF came under fire in the center of Mazar-i-Sharif city on Saturday, killing one and wounding five others, an ISAF spokesman said.
They were in an unmarked vehicle when gunmen on a motorbike and in a car opened fire on them near the city's famous Blue Mosque, witnesses said. Four of the attackers were captured, they said.
Meanwhile, near the border with Pakistan in Paktia province, a dozen men dragged two worshippers from evening prayers on Friday and shot them dead, district chief Mirza Mohammed said on Saturday. They "killed them outside the holy place and they disappeared," he said.
A tribal elder was shot dead inside another mosque in neighboring Khost Province on Wednesday.
These attacks were the latest on the devout country's mosques during the holy month of Ramadan, with three pro-government religious leaders killed in various provinces mid-October and a district chief shot while praying.
The killings have been blamed on the Taliban insurgents who target people allied to President Hamid Karzai's administration.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility on Saturday for the killing of a man who contested landmark provincial elections last month, and his son and brother.
Ghani Khan was killed as he was driving in Helmand Province where he had failed to win a provincial council seat in the Sept. 18 election.
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