BRENDON NICHOLSON
A YOUNG female medical orderly is one of three New Zealand soldiers killed by a Taliban bomb in Afghanistan, driving home the extent to which the war is a conflict in which violence can strike anywhere.
Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, 26, was the first female soldier from New Zealand killed in the war.
She died alongside Corporal Luke Tamatea, 31, and Private Richard Harris, 21 in a lightly armoured Humvee vehicle hit by the bomb as it travelled last in a convoy in the northeast of Bamyan Province on Sunday.
The deaths bring the number of New Zealand soldiers killed in the war to 10, five in the past fortnight, and a disproportionately high loss rate from its contingent of 149. Australia has lost 33 soldiers from its force of about 1550.
Read the full story at The Australian