4 U.S. Soldiers Killed by Mine in Afghanistan

A land mine exploded under a U.S. vehicle south of the Afghan capital Saturday, killing four soldiers in the deadliest incident for American troops in Afghanistan in almost 10 months, the military said.

The blast highlighted the dangers still facing foreign and Afghan troops more than three years after the fall of the Taliban, although there were conflicting accounts about whether the mine was freshly laid or leftover from Afghanistan’s long wars.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast. But U.S. Army spokeswoman Lt. Cindy Moore said investigators suspected that the mine was an old charge dislodged by recent rain and snow or that the vehicle had wandered into an unmapped minefield.

“We believe it was an old mine, which could have shifted,” she said.

The victims were among a group of American and Afghan officials scouting a potential site for a shooting range in Lowgar province, 25 miles south of the Afghan capital. The four were members of Indiana’s National Guard, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said, without giving their names.

Lowgar Gov. Mohammed Aman Hamini said the incident occurred in a desert area crisscrossed by rough tracks.

“It’s an old mine. There’s no traffic on the route they took, but the Russians used to use it because they were afraid of the main road,” Hamini said.

However, Mullah Abdul Hakim Latifi, who claimed to speak for the Taliban, said its fighters had detonated the mine by remote control. “We’ve said again and again that we would resume our holy war in the spring,” Latifi said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.

The blast Saturday was the deadliest incident for the U.S. military in Afghanistan since May 29, when four American special forces soldiers were killed in a blast in Zabol province, near the Pakistani border.