Two British soldiers killed in Afghanistan

ASSOCIATED PRESS SERVICE

KABUL - Two British soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force were killed in southern Afghanistan when they were hit by an explosion, ISAF said Monday.
The two were on patrol when they were killed on Sunday, the 39-nation ISAF said in a statement.
A British ISAF spokesman in the volatile southern province of Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel Simon Millar, told AFP the two were British nationals but could not immediately give details of what happened.
They had been “caught in an explosion during a routine patrol,” the ISAF statement said, also without details.
There are regular attacks by Taliban insurgents in Helmand, where the rebels control a handful of districts.
The troopers were airlifted to an ISAF hospital at the biggest camp in Helmand, the British-run Bastion, where one was pronounced dead on arrival and the other died subsequently, the statement said.
Most of the soldiers in Helmand are British, some of about 7,500 British soldiers in the troubled nation who are part of ISAF.
Around 35 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, most of them in attacks.
Around 70,000 international troops, mainly from Western countries, are based in Afghanistan, fighting back the insurgency and helping the Kabul government to rebuild the country from the destruction of decades of conflict.