Coalition soldier killed in Afghan battle

KABUL, July 9 (Reuters) A soldier in Afghanistan's U S-led coalition force was killed in a firefight today, a day after a roadside blast hit a patrol of Spanish peacekeepers, killing one and wounding four.

U S-led troops have mounted big offensives in Afghanistan's south and east over recent weeks in response to the most severe Taliban violence since the hardline Islamists were ousted in 2001.

''A coalition soldier was killed this morning in a firefight with a group of enemy fighters,'' said U S military spokeswoman Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence.

She did not give the nationality of the soldier who was killed in a firefight in the Panjwai district of the southern province of Kandahar.

Sixty-five foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, in combat or accidents while on duty, as Taliban violence has intensified.

U S coalition forces have responded with offensives in the east and the south, aiming to push back the insurgents as a NATO peacekeeping mission prepares to take over from U S-led forces in the south.

Three coalition soldiers were wounded in a push into Panjwai yesterday. A coalition patrol found the bodies of 10 Taliban killed in a strike, the U S-led force said today.

There has been intermittent fighting in the farming district, only 25 km west of Kandahar town, for two months, since many Taliban were found to have infiltrated.

About 230 Taliban have been killed there since May, according to coalition and Afghan officials, along with at least 17 civilians, dozens of Afghan police and troops and four coalition troops.

In a separate incident, a blast hit a Spanish NATO peacekeeping patrol in Farah province in the west yesterday, killing a Peruvian serving with the Spanish military and wounding four Spanish soldiers, Spain's Defence Ministry said.

The NATO force said the blast was caused by a bomb but the police chief of Farah province, Sayed Agha Saquib, said he thought the patrol hit an old mine left over from decades of conflict.

A Taliban commander, Mullah Hayat Khan, said his men were responsible. Taliban spokesmen often claim responsibility for incidents that foreign forces say are accidents.

Western Afghanistan is much more peaceful than the south and east but there has been violence in Farah this year, including bomb attacks on road-construction crews and an attempted suicide-bomb attack on a NATO base.

The NATO force operates in the generally peaceful north, west and the capital, Kabul. Of the 65 foreign troops killed this year, only four have been from the NATO force.

REUTERS PKS BST1527