Three Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan today when their vehicle was attacked by militants, a military official said.
He said the soldiers were not killed in a bomb explosion, as had been earlier reported. Five more soldiers were injured in the same incident.
Two of the dead were 21, and the other was 23. The military source said they had all been coming to the end of their scheduled tours of duty.
Two weeks ago, three Canadian soldiers died in a bomb explosion in the same area.
So far 96 Canadian soldiers have died since Ottawa deployed troops to Afghanistan in late 2002. Canada has around 2,500 soldiers based in the southern city of Kandahar on a mission that is due to end in 2011.
"We have never told anybody anything other than this is a very dangerous, very difficult mission," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a televised news conference in Windsor, Ontario.
"We got into this seven years ago because we realised that to leave a country like Afghanistan in a state of anarchy and chaos was creating a situation that was endangering our own security," he said.
Reuters