A British soldier with NATO forces in Afghanistan has been killed in a mine blast in the troubled southern province of Helmand, the defence ministry in London and the alliance said Sunday.
The soldier, from the 5th Batallion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, died instantly when an apparent "legacy anti-personnel mine" went off near the airport at Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, the ministry said.
"An ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) soldier died in an explosion while on a security patrol with an Afghan National Army unit," the NATO-led force said in a statement earlier Sunday in Kabul.
The defence ministry said the soldier was part of a checkpoint team that had gone to investigate a report of a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a civilian aircraft at the airport.
His death took to 109 the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year. Forty-two of them have died since the start of June, the deadliest month for the NATO deployment since 2001.
Some 70,000 multinational troops, some under US command, some under NATO, along with Afghan forces, are fighting Taliban militants in an attempt to restore security to the war-ravaged nation.
