In Afghanistan Five NATO soldiers die on same day

The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said Saturday that a foreign soldier had been killed in action in the south of the country the day before, the same day that four Canadian troops died in attacks.

The five soldiers were killed on Friday, when clashes and attacks across the country left nearly 40 people dead, 19 of them policemen, as the insurgency led by the extremist Taliban militia rages on.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement that the soldier was killed in a "hostile incident" on Friday. It did not release the nationality of the troop, leaving that task to the home nation.

The Canadian military announced in Ottawa on Friday that four of its soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed and nine others were injured in two separate explosions in southern Kandahar province, a Taliban stronghold.

"Please do not think of these incidents as a failure on the part of any person of the mission itself," Brigadier General Jon Vance, the Canadian commander in Kandahar, said in a nationally televised address from Afghanistan.

Canada has 2,800 troops deployed in Afghanistan as part of ISAF, which has swollen to reach nearly 62,000 soldiers from 42 nations, according to alliance figures.

Most of the Canadian troops are in the dangerous south, where Australia, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States have also deployed forces.

The latest casualties on one of the bloodiest days yet for ISAF took to 71 the number of international soldiers to die in Afghanistan this year.

About 40 have died in Iraq so far this year, according to the site.

Around 294 international troops died in Afghanistan last year, most of them in attacks.