Four US soldiers were killed and three wounded in a bomb attack in Afghanistan yesterday as they were trying to clear militants from an area before an election next month, the US military said.

The three wounded men were hurt in secondary explosions as they tried to pull their fellow soldiers to safety after the first blast in Zabul province, in the south of the country.

"Attacks such as this strengthen, not weaken, the resolve of the US/Coalition, Afghan National Security Forces, and the Afghan people," said a US commander, Major-General Jason Kamiya.

US forces have now suffered 47 deaths in combat in Afghanistan this year making it the worst period since they arrived to oust the Taliban in October 2001.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Dai Chopan district. A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, said Taliban fighters had planted the improvised explosive device.

Two Afghan government soldiers were killed in a similar blast in another part of troubled Zabul, a provincial official said.

The US unit was involved in operations in support of the September 18 parliamentary and provincial elections, which the Taliban and other militants have condemned and vowed to disrupt.

"The unit's mission is part of a much larger operation to disrupt enemy forces and to thereby provide a safe environment for upcoming September elections," the US military said.

The Afghan Government and US officials say the militants will fail in their bid to spoil the vote.

Yesterday's casualty toll is the worst for US forces in Afghanistan since 16 American servicemen were killed in June when their helicopter was shot down as they tried to rescue four trapped US special-forces soldiers.

Only one of the special-forces soldiers survived.

Also yesterday, suspected Taliban militants killed a senior pro-government cleric as he was walking to a mosque in Kandahar Province, also in the south, a local official said.

Meanwhile, two US Embassy officials were hurt by a roadside bomb that hit their convoy near the Afghan capital yesterday, a spokesman said.

"I can confirm that two American personnel of the US Embassy were slightly hurt while on a routine embassy mission," said Michael Macy, a US Embassy spokesman.

He declined to identify the two and also refused to say if the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, was in the convoy when the blast occurred.

An investigation was launched to find out who was behind the attack, he added.

Gunmen have this year killed several members of a government-appointed religious council in the south and east, where the militants are most active.

In June, Mawlavi Abdullah Fayaz, the head of Kandahar's religious council and a prominent Taliban critic, was shot dead and a suicide attack attributed to the Taliban killed more than 20 during his funeral at a mosque a day later.

The Taliban say the clerics are legitimate targets because they are preaching against the insurgents who have declared a holy war against the government and foreign forces.

(China Daily August 22, 2005)