Roadside bombs killed eight people around Afghanistan in the past two days as security forces braced for a possible spike in violence ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, NATO and Afghan officials said Thursday.
NATO said two of its service members were killed in the south and officials said a Turkish engineer and five Afghan soldiers were killed in separate incidents in the country's west and east. NATO did not provide any further details about the attack and did not prove their nationalities.
The NATO deaths bring the total in September for international forces to seven. A total of 330 members of the international military coalition have died do far this year.
The police chief for Afghanistan's western regions, Zia Uddin Mahmoodi, said the Turkish engineer working on road construction projects in western Herat province's Adraskan district when his vehicle hit a bomb. Two of his bodyguards were wounded.
In Kabul, the Defense Ministry announced that a roadside bomb in eastern Khost province killed five Afghan soldiers on Wednesday. The ministry gave no other details.
Afghan security forces have been placed on alert and many international aid organizations and embassies have advised foreigners living and working in Afghanistan to limit their movements over the weekend starting Friday -- which marks the 10th anniversary of the death of legendary Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massood. He was killed in a suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and his forces later helped the United States rout the Taliban after the Oct. 7 invasion of Afghanistan.
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