Three more Nato soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, the military said yesterday, as casualties continued to mount in the deadliest single month for foreign forces of the long war.

One soldier was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, while the other died following a bomb blast in the south on Thursday, Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

A separate ISAF statement said another soldier was killed yesterday by an improvised explosive device, also in the south.

The deaths brought to 83 the number of foreign soldiers to have died in Afghanistan this month, and to 303 the total for the year to date.

The nationalities of the latest casualties were not released.

The June record eclipses the previous bloodiest month for Nato troops, last August, when 77 soldiers were killed, according to an AFP tally based on statistics compiled by the independent icasualties.org website.

Much of southern Afghanistan is blighted by the escalating Taliban insurgency, now in its ninth year since a US-led invasion pushed the hardline Islamist regime from power.

Last year, 520 Nato troops died - the worst annual total.

The US and Nato have more than 140,000 troops in the country fighting the insurgency.