5 Romanian soldiers injured in Afghanistan

Five Romanian soldiers have been injured after an improvised explosive device (IED) hit their vehicle in southern Afghanistan.

“I can confirm that a patrol struck an IED (improvised explosive device) in a district in Zabul. There were several wounded and no deaths. Five were wounded,” an unnamed NATO spokesman told AFP in Kabul.

The spokesman for the governor of Zabul, Mohammad Khan Rasoulyar, also confirmed the five soldiers were Romanian.

“The bomb struck a Romanian armored carrier on Highway One in the outskirts of Qalat, the provincial capital for Zabul province,” he said.

In another development, a powerful blast shook Afghanistan’s eastern town of Jalalabad, killing 15 people and injuring five others.

The blast occurred Tuesday morning on the Kabul-Jalabad highway, about five km (3 miles) from Kabul. “It was a mine explosion mixed with some more explosives placed on the side of the road when an Afghan government convoy passed by,” a Press TV correspondent reported.

The convoy was to look into a US airstrike in the mountainous southern Uruzgan province in which at least 33 civilians, among them four women and one child, were killed.

Fourteen people also sustained injuries in the aerial operation. The civilians were in three minibuses traveling along a main road in the mountainous province when they were hit.

Many Afghan civilians have been killed both by violent militant acts, including bombings and daily fighting, as well as by US military operations in the country.