The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Kabul

A roadside bomb killed three U.S. coalition members in western Afghanistan, while 18 Taliban fighters died in clashes elsewhere in the country, officials said Thursday.

The bomb that struck the U.S. coalition vehicle Wednesday also wounded another coalition member, the U.S. military said in a statement. It did not provide the exact location of the attack or the nationalities of the victims. Most coalition members are American.

Taliban militants regularly target Afghan, U.S. and other foreign soldiers in their campaign to weaken the government of President Hamid Karzai and its Western backers. The number of insurgent attacks has risen 30 percent this year compared to 2007.

In the southern Uruzgan province, meanwhile, a U.S. coalition airstrike killed 15 militants Wednesday, including a Taliban commander, another coalition statement said.

The militants were killed near a riverbed in Deh Rawood district, away from the local villages, the statement said.

Another three militants were killed inside a cave in the western Farah province's Bala Buluk district during a raid by American and Afghan troops Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

The same day, a coalition airstrike hit an Afghan army checkpoint in Khost province in eastern Afghanistan, killing nine soldiers, Afghan officials said. The U.S. military acknowledged that its forces "may have mistakenly killed and injured" Afghan soldiers in what may have been a case of mistaken identity "on both sides." The deaths came as Karzai presses international forces to avoid airstrikes in civilian areas.