Nato troops killed in Afghan explosions

About 113,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan fighting Taliban-led fighters

Two separate roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan have left four US troops and a British soldier dead.

The US soldiers, the first American military casualties in Afghanistan in the new year, were killed in an explosion on Sunday in the south of the country, Nato-led forces said in a statement.

The UK soldier died while on foot patrol in Helmand province, Britain’s ministry of defence said on Monday.

The Taliban said that a series of explosions on Sunday in Panjwai district of southern Kandahar had killed several foreign soldiers, but their report could not be verified immediately.

Meanwhile, the Afghan defence ministry said its soldiers killed more than 10 Taliban fighters on Sunday in northern Kunduz province’s Imam Sahib district.

Nato and the US have 113,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting Taliban-led fighters, who are aiming to overthrow the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

Break suspended

On Monday, Karzai ordered parliament to suspend a winter break so that politicians can vote on new cabinet nominees, after politicians rejected over two thirds of his original candidates.

Parliament refused 17 out of 24 of his nominees on Saturday, casting Afghanistan into further political array after a UN-backed probe in October threw out nearly one third of his votes from August’s presidential poll.

Karzai’s decree ordered that the legislature should delay its 45-day recess until he proposes new ministers in place of those rejected by the parliamentarians at the weekend, his office said in a statement.

It ordered “the national assembly to postpone leave until the members of the cabinet are approved”.

If Karzai fails to have his cabinet approved in the next few weeks he will have to head to a London conference later this month seeking extra funds from Western donors without being able to say who will control a significant chunk of them.

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