Four Canadian soldiers and a journalist were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s west, Nato said.

Nato said that the four Canadian troops and a reporter embedded with their unit died when their armoured vehicle hit a bomb while on an afternoon patrol south of Kandahar city, the biggest loss of life for Canadian forces in Afghanistan this year.

The Canadian Press identified the journalist as Michelle Lang, a 34-year-old health reporter with the Calgary Herald, who was on her first assignment to Afghanistan.