Kabul - A soldier from the US-led coalition troops was killed when attacked while on patrol in southern Afghanistan, a statement issued by the US military said on Thursday.

The statement, which was issued by the US military base at Bagram airfield, about 50 kilometres north of Kabul, did not disclose the nationality of the soldier, nor did it provide more details about the exact location of the incident.

Most of the soldiers serving under coalition banner are from the US.

Washington, Aug 28 : In order to chalk out a strategy to combat the escalating violence along the Pak-Afghan border, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff secretly convened a secret meeting of the most senior American and Pakistani commanders on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday.

The gathering aboard the Abraham Lincoln was less confrontational in tone, aides said. “It was one of those meetings to help clear up the situation, get an understanding of the issues, and look for a way forward,” said a senior Pakistani officer privy to what was discussed at the meeting.

Kabul - Two German soldiers were injured Wednesday in a bombing in northern Afghanistan, one critically, an Afghan official said.

A remote-controlled bomb was used to attack an armoured vehicle of the German army in the district of Chardara in Kunduz province, provincial Governor Engineer Mohammed Omar told Deutsche-Presse Agentur dpa.

He blamed Taliban militants and the al-Qaeda terrorist network for the attack.

London, Aug 27: Afghanistan is now more dangerous for British troops than Iraq has ever been, a new report has revealed.

It shows eight out of every 1,000 UK servicemen are being killed in NATO’s mission to tame the Taliban in the Afghan badlands. That is more than the coalition death rate of 7.5 per 1,000 personnel during the worst of the fighting in Iraq.

In newly pacified Baghdad and Basra, the rate is now down to less than three per 1,000, The Sun reported.

Kabul - Police and Afghan villagers found the dead body of a Japanese aid worker on Wednesday morning, who was abducted by four armed men the previous day, officials said.

"I can confirm that the dead body of our colleague has been found in Naw area of Khewa district in a mountain and the body has been seen and confirmed by our other colleagues in the area," Noor Zaman, an official from Peshawar-Kai, a Japanese aid group, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Kabul - US-led coalition forces claimed Wednesday to have killed more than a dozen Taliban insurgents in volatile southern Afghanistan, while another four were detained by the combined forces elsewhere.

Afghan and coalition forces on Monday spotted a large number of heavily armed militants gathering in small groups and preparing to attack soldiers in Sangin district of the restive Helmand province, the US military said in a statement.

"The troops engaged the militants with small arms, machine guns, and close air support, killing more than a dozen militants," the statement said.

No Afghan or coalition soldiers were hurt in the incident, the military added.