KABUL – Bomb strikes killed two NATO soldiers in Afghanistan while a rocket attack at the major international military base in southern Afghanistan wounded eight international troops, officials said Monday.
A Norwegian soldier died Monday when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Faryab province in the north, the country’s military said. An explosion Sunday in the southern of Helmand killed a British soldier, according to the British Defense Ministry.
The latest deaths bring the total of NATO forces killed in Afghanistan this month to 37, compared with 23 in January 2009.
Sunday’s rocket hit inside Kandahar Air Field after dark, injuring four Bulgarians and four Romanians, said Flight Lt. Wendy Wheadon, a spokeswoman for the international force.
The attack occurred as Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai Mladenov visited 270 Bulgarian troops who guard the inner zone of the Kandahar airport, the ministry said. Mladenov was about 400 yards (meters) from where the rocket hit and was not hurt.
The base was hit by rockets before, though rarely with enough precision to wound people. Wheadon said the last time a rocket struck inside the base was early December when no one was hurt.
Three wounded Bulgarians were transported to Germany for further treatment, while the fourth was released Sunday, according to the country’s Defense Ministry.
In Bucharest, the Defense Ministry confirmed two of its soldiers were hurt in the attack. One left the military hospital Monday and the other was in stable condition, it said. It was not immediately clear why NATO and Romania had conflicting numbers of wounded troops.