SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian special forces soldier has been killed in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan which wounded three other troops, the army said Wednesday.

Signaller Sean McCarthy, 25, was the sixth Australian to die in combat in Afghanistan since 2002 and the fifth in the past nine months.

The head of the Australian Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said McCarthy died after the vehicle he was in was hit by an improvised bomb during a patrol on Tuesday afternoon.

Two other Australian Special Operations Task Group soldiers and a trooper from another member nation of the coalition fighting a Taliban rebel insurgency were wounded in the attack.

Houston said New Zealand-born McCarthy was an "experienced, professional, and highly skilled soldier" on his second tour in Afghanistan.

The military chief did not reveal the location of the attack but Australia's 1,000 troops in Afghanistan are mostly assisting a Dutch-led reconstruction operation in the southern province of Uruzgan, a former Taliban stronghold.

The 1996-2001 Taliban government was ousted in a US-led invasion for harbouring Al-Qaeda leaders after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Taliban have regrouped to wage an insurgency against the government, which is supported by thousands of international troops from around 40 mostly Western nations.

Houston said the latest incident would be a "trigger for more and more active operations against the people who produce these dreadful weapons."

"This will harden our resolve to keep these Taliban leaders, these Taliban bombmakers under pressure, we will continue to go after them and we will continue to disrupt their activities," he said.

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