Two NATO soldiers were killed Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a military base in Afghanistan, the alliance and local government sources said.

NATO spokesman Lieutenant Commander Iain Baxter confirmed two alliance soldiers had been killed in a suicide attack in Khost but was unable to give further details about the incident or disclose the soldier's nationalities.

A local government source, who declined to be named, told Reuters that a man wearing a suicide vest detonated the device outside a U.S. military base also used by the Afghan National Border Police in the Ali Sher district of Khost Province, close to Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the attacker was a member of the Islamist group and had infiltrated the border police.

(Reporting Elyas Wahdat, Peter Graff and Golnar Motevalli; Editing by Micahel Roddy)

Pakistan Afghanistan