IED attack kills 1 Afghan army soldier

One Afghan soldier was killed in a bomb attack, said the country's Defense Ministry on Monday. "An Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier was martyred following an improvised explosive device (IED) attack," the ministry said in a statement. The Taliban home-made IEDs have remained a major threat to Afghan security forces. The army specialists had also found and defused 37 IEDs and landmines over the past 24 hours, the statement noted. The Afghan security forces casualties have risen as they took the security charges from U.S. and NATO troops last year. More than 51,000 NATO-led foreign troops, over 33,000 of them Americans, are currently being deployed in Afghanistan.