The son of the new head of the Dutch armed forces was killed in Afghanistan with a fellow soldier when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb.

Lieutenant Dennis van Uhm, 23, was returning to his base after a large-scale reconnaissance mission in the southern province of Uruzgan yesterday when the blast occurred. Two Dutch soldiers were wounded.

General Peter van Uhm was made commander of the armed forces at a ceremony on Thursday. The Dutch said there was nothing to indicate that the attack, which was blamed on the Taleban, was aimed at the general’s son.

A spokesman for the Taleban told news agencies: “We knew that there was someone important in that vehicle but we did not know he was the son of the Dutch army chief.”

The claim is doubted by Dutch military sources.

The loss of Lieutenant van Uhm is likely to erode further the dwindling public support in the Netherlands for the country’s continuing deployment as part of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, which is engaged in increasingly fierce fighting with the Taleban.

Sixteen Dutch soldiers have been killed since August 2006. The insurgent militia last month threatened to step up attacks against Dutch forces after Geert Wilders, a right-wing Dutch politician, issued an antiIslam film called Fitna on the internet.

The Dutch Government decided last November to extend the mission of its 1,600-strong force until 2010.

Freek Meulman, the deputy chief of joint staffs, said that improvised explosive devices wounded 11 Dutch soldiers two weeks ago.

The number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year is now 44. More than 200 were killed last year.

Three Afghan civilians died in a roadside bomb blast near to Kabul, the capital, yesterday. A suicide bomber in the southwestern province of Nimroz killed 25 people, including two senior police officials, on Thursday.

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