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2 NATO soldiers die in Afghan violence

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two NATO soldiers, including one Briton, died battling militants in southern Afghanistan as escalating violence claimed the life of an Afghan woman who ran a radio station in the north, the second female journalist killed in a week.

The NATO soldiers died in “separate engagements with enemy fighters” in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, a statement from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said, without providing any other details.

Britain’s Defense Ministry later confirmed that one of the two soldiers was British, but would not reveal the nationality of the other. It said its soldier was taking part in an offensive patrol in the Upper Gereshk Valley area of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan when they came under attack.

“The company was moving forward to clear a Taliban compound when they came under fire and the soldier was shot,” a ministry statement said.

Their deaths bring to 77 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count. Six have been killed in the last six days, including at least four U.S. soldiers. At least 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year.

Both military and militant operations are intensifying, raising doubts about the prospects for stability more than five years after a U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power.

Militant fatalities this month account for about 10 percent of the estimated 2,000 insurgency-related deaths in Afghanistan this year, according to an AP count based on figures by U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.

Elsewhere, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops backed by airstrikes killed two militants and detained 19 others.

The increase in violence is also claiming the lives of civilians and media workers.

Zakia Zaki, owner and manager of Peace Radio, was gunned down in front of her 8-year-old son inside her home in northern Parwan province, provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Takwa said. No motive was immediately known. Zaki led the radio station since it opened after the fall of the Taliban in October 2001, Takwa said.

Another female reporter, Shokiba Sanga Amaaj, was shot inside her house in Kabul on Friday by two male relatives, said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, the Kabul police director of criminal investigations. She was a newsreader for private Shamshad TV.

Women have become active in Afghanistan’s independent media with the easing of restrictions after the fundamentalist Taliban regime was ousted, but remain a small minority among journalists.

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Associated Press reporter Amir Shah contributed to this report.