Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The son of the Netherlands’ new military chief was one of two Dutch NATO soldiers killed by a bomb in southern Afghanistan on Friday, officials said, a day after a suicide blast took 25 Afghan lives.

Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the roadside attack that killed Lieutenant Dennis van Uhm, the son of General Peter van Uhm, and said the attack was in retaliation to an anti-Islam film by a Dutch MP.

General van Uhm was named top commander of the Dutch armed forces only on Thursday.

Four Dutch soldiers were returning from a reconnaissance mission when the blast hit their vehicle in the troubled southern province of Uruzgan, Dutch defence ministry spokesman General Freek Meulman said.

The two men killed were 23 and 22 years old, said Meulman. Two other soldiers aged 20 and 25 were wounded, with one in critical condition and the other stable.

“We knew that the son of Dutch chief of staff was in the vehicle,” rebel spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP, changing his account from an earlier statement that the militant group did not know who was in the car.

The hardline militia had threatened to step up attacks against Dutch forces in Afghanistan if far-right Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders broadcast his anti-Islam film, which was aired last month.

“This (attack) was part of our operation against the Dutch. First it was because they have occupied our country and secondly it was in retaliation to the Dutch insult to our great prophet Mohammed,” Ahmadi said.

Ahmadi’s claim could not be independently confirmed and the rebel spokesman has in the past made exaggerated claims.

Uruzgan police chief Juma Gul Hemat said the incident occurred near Tirin Kot, the provincial capital. “It was a roadside bomb blast which hit the Dutch soldiers. Two soldiers were killed,” he told AFP.

More than 1,600 Dutch soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which is fighting the Taliban insurgency.

The Dutch government decided in November to extend the mission until late 2010.

Sixteen Dutch soldiers have been killed in the country, either in accidents or combat.

The latest casualties brought to 44 the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year. The violence took the lives of nearly 220 foreign soldiers last year.

Three Afghan civilians died in another roadside bomb blast near the capital Kabul on Friday, police said.

The men were killed and another wounded when their vehicle hit a bomb laid on a road frequently used by Afghan and international forces in Logar province, provincial police chief Ghulam Mustafa told AFP.

He blamed the attack on Taliban-linked militants.

The attacks followed a suicide bomb blast in the southwestern province of Nimroz on Thursday evening that killed 25 people including two senior police officials.

Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman, said the group could not immediately claim responsibility for the Nimroz attack.

Thursday’s attack in the provincial capital Zaranj took place in a crowded marketplace near the city’s mosque. Dozens of worshippers had left the mosque after evening prayers.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the suicide bombing.

“Those who carried out such an attack in a marketplace while a large number of people went about their daily lives are the enemies of religion and the country,” a statement from Karzai’s office quoted him as saying.

“Those who carried out or ordered this attack will no doubt be punished by God in the day of judgement.”