(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-13 09:59

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Bomb blasts struck two NATO convoys in Afghanistan Wednesday, wounding four foreign soldiers, while five civilians were killed in separate extremist-linked unrest, officials said.

In an attack claimed by Taliban insurgents, a suicide car bomb struck a Canadian armoured vehicle driving through the southern city of Kandahar, the Canadian military said.

A Canadian soldier keeps watch at scene of a suicide bomb attack in Kandahar March 12, 2008. [Agencies]

An Afghan man was killed, his body badly burned by the blast, which also set a house alight, and at least one civilian was wounded, witnesses and officials said.

A Canadian soldier with NATO's International Security Assistance Force was also injured, said ISAF spokesman Captain Mark Gough.

"It was a suicide car bomb attack against a Canadian convoy.... One military vehicle was damaged," said another ISAF spokesman, Captain Fraser Clark.

The Taliban, an Islamic militant group that was in government in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, confirmed it was behind the blast -- similar to scores of others carried out by the insurgents.

A roadside bomb, another favoured Taliban weapon, meanwhile struck a vehicle containing Romanian troops also serving with the ISAF, wounding three of them, the Romanian defence ministry said in Bucharest.

The soldiers were hit on a road linking Kandahar to neighbouring Zabul province, it said, adding the wounded were in a stable condition.

ISAF reported meanwhile that two Afghan women and two children were killed Tuesday when troops returned fire at insurgents who had attacked them in southern Afghanistan.

"Tragically, a group of civilians received fire causing the death of two women and two children," a statement said, without saying where the attack occurred.

Britain voiced regret after the counter-strike by its forces, which also left one civilian injured.

The Ministry of Defence said an investigation had been launched after the incident.

"We can confirm UK forces were involved in an operation in the south of Helmand Province," the MoD said in a statement.

"We deeply regret that this incident happened and do everything we can to mitigate this from happening. This incident is currently under investigation and it would be inappropriate for us to comment."

According to British media reports citing military officials, the incident happened when air strikes were called in by the British ground forces against Taliban positions.

Civilian casualties by international soldiers helping the Afghan government defeat a Taliban-led uprising are deeply sensitive and President Hamid Karzai has regularly called on troops to take more care.

Also linked to the Taliban insurgency, the rebels destroyed overnight a mobile phone mast in the western province of Herat late Tuesday, police said.

The attack was the fifth targeting mobile phone antennas since the Taliban warned they would target communication technology unless it was switched off at night because it was being used to pinpoint rebel hideouts.

In the western province of Farah meanwhile, police were searching for five officers missing following a clash with the rebels on Monday, provincial police commander Jalilullah Rahman said.

A policeman seized in the same incident was believed to have been killed by his Taliban captors, Rahman said.

The Taliban, who were removed from government in late 2001, are waging an insurgency that was at its deadliest last year with more than 6,000 people killed -- most of them rebel fighters.

The UN Security Council Wednesday weighed a sharper mandate for the new UN special envoy for Afghanistan to better coordinate with NATO-led forces and Kabul against the resurgent Taliban.