Roadside bomb kills three U.S. troops

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN >> Three U.S. service members were killed Tuesday when a roadside bomb detonated next to their vehicle in the embattled province of Ghazni, U.S. military officials said.

Three other U.S. service members were wounded along with a U.S. military contractor, they added. The survivors were evacuated from the area and are receiving medical attention. The names of the dead and the injured were not immediately released.

Separately, the military said Tuesday that a preliminary review has found that an Afghan commando likely accidentally shot a U.S. Army Ranger on Saturday during a raid on a compound in a remote part of the country. The U.S. soldier died later that day.

Combined, the deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in Afghanistan this year to 13. Five of those deaths occurred this month.

U.S. military officials said the attack Tuesday took place during a military patrol near Ghazni city, which has remained tense and unstable since Taliban forces overran it in August in a four-day siege that left more than 100 people dead and parts of the city in ruins.

Aref Noori, a spokesman for the Ghazni governor’s office, said a joint military operation by Afghan and NATO troops had been underway in a village southeast of Ghazni city Tuesday morning when the bomb struck an armored military vehicle carrying foreign forces. In the past several weeks, the insurgents also have launched assaults on villages in rural districts of the province that are populated by minority ethnic Hazara Shiites. The attacks sent thousands of residents fleeing..

Senior U.S. military officials have sought to reassure Afghan forces. The top U.S. officer in the country, Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, took the unusual step of carrying a rifle in the city last week. More typically, a general carries a pistol.

The incident Saturday killed Sgt. Leandro Jasso, 25, in Nimruz province’s Khash Rod district. The operation was somewhat unusual because the coalition said it came against al-Qaeda militants, rather than those of the Islamic State, which are more typically targeted.