KABUL: A US soldier and an Afghan woman were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan, NATO said Friday, amid a surge in Taliban violence and counter-insurgency operations across the country.

The soldier was operating under NATO`s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and died following an Taliban-style bomb attack in the south of the country.

An ISAF statement said the attack took place on Thursday but gave no further details.

The death brings to 438 the total number of foreign soldiers killed in the Afghan war so far this year. The total for 2009 was 520, according to an AFP count based on a tally kept by icasualties.org.

In a separate incident, alliance soldiers killed an Afghan woman during a raid on a house in the troubled eastern province of Khost, which had aimed to capture a Taliban commander, ISAF said.

Chasing the suspect through walled compounds, the troops opened fire after seeing a gun pointing towards them from a room. The troops later found they had killed a woman, an ISAF statement said.

"Inside the room, they found one woman dead and another with a minor wound as a result of the gunfire. An AK-47 was next to the killed female," it said.

According to Afghan tradition women rarely take part in war but most Afghan households keep firearms in their homes for security.

Civilian casualties are an extremely sensitive issue in Afghanistan, especially when caused by the US-led NATO force, deployed in Afghanistan to help Kabul battle an insurgency being waged by the Taliban.

According to a recent UN report more than 1,200 Afghan civilians lost their lives in violence in the first half of the year, about 31 percent higher than in the same period last year.

The Taliban were responsible for the bulk of the deaths, the report said.

Two civilians were killed and at least 10 others were injured in a separate bomb blast in eastern Nangarhar province, also on Wednesday, ISAF said, blaming the bombing on Taliban.

BDST: 1409 HRS, August 20, 2010