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Two US soldiers killed by roadside bomb in Afghanistan

Latest attack comes amid stalled efforts to restart peace talks

Phil Thomas
New York
Saturday 11 January 2020 10:42 EST
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Donald Trump addresses US troops at Bagram airbase on a surprise Thanksgiving Day trip to Afghanistan
Donald Trump addresses US troops at Bagram airbase on a surprise Thanksgiving Day trip to Afghanistan (AFP via Getty Images)

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Two US soldiers have been killed and two others injured in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan, the United States military has said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which an Afghan official said happened in the Dand district of Kandahar province in the south of the country.

The US military did not immediately identify those killed.

More than 2,400 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001 following the 9/11 terror attacks. Another 20,000 have been wounded.

The latest attack comes amid stalled efforts to restart peace talks.

In November Donald Trump made a surprise Thanksgiving visit to US troops at Bagram airbase, his first trip to Afghanistan.

While there he held talks with Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president, and said he was looking to hold talks with the Taliban, three months after abruptly declaring that he had withdrawn a previously unannounced invitation to Taliban leaders to meet him at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

That followed the killing of a US soldier in a Taliban attack.

He said: "We say it has to be a ceasefire and they didn't want to do a ceasefire and now they want to do a ceasefire, I believe. It will probably work out that way."

At the time the Taliban said it was interested in holding talks.

Last week there were reports that the radical Islamist group was discussing a possible ceasefire, which the US peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been pressing for.

A break in fighting would give a window in which the US and the Taliban could then forge an agreement to withdraw all of America's troops.

However, the latest US military deaths will provide a fresh obstacle to the resumption of talks.

AP contributed to this report

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