The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack Tuesday that killed five Canadians, when a roadside bomb exploded beneath their armored vehicle in the southeastern province of Kandahar.

Among the dead was Michelle Lang, the first Canadian journalist to be killed in Afghanistan. Five other Canadians were also injured in the blast.

Lang, the first Canadian reporter to die while covering the conflict in Afghanistan, was hailed Thursday as a gifted journalist who brought a human dimension to her battlefield reporting.

"She had a natural curiosity to put a human face on what was happening in Afghanistan, whether that was what the soldiers were doing or what civilians were doing in reconstruction," said Lorne Motley, editor-in-chief of the Calgary Herald where Lang, 34, had worked since 2002.

"Michelle had that tendency to be able to reach into a story and pull out things that others could not, and she saw the human element," Motley said of Lang, who earlier this year received a coveted journalism award for best specialized reporting from the Canadian Newspaper Association.

The blast took place close to Deh-e-Bagh, a village seen as a model for the Canadian army, where small groups of soldiers live among locals carrying out reconstruction and development efforts.

The location of the attack came as an additional blow to the Canadian military, occurring in Kandahar, a one-time Taliban stronghold that has been seen as increasingly secure thanks to intense Canadian efforts to engage the local community.

"(There is) no such thing as a safe part of anywhere in Afghanistan," said retired Canadian general Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded UN peacekeepers in Sarajevo in 1992, adding that the region "has been one of the quietest areas.

"I think the qualifying term is relatively safe," he told CBC.

Tuesday's was the bloodiest attack since July 2007, when six soldiers were killed by an explosion in the same area.

Sergeant Erich Braun, said the "key village" approach represented "a tactical application of counter-insurgency doctrine." But it is a doctrine that is now likely to come under renewed scrutiny, although Braun remained convinced of its effectiveness.

"The concept is not new. Our US allies tried it in Iraq, and proved it works," he wrote on the defense ministry's website.

As part of the effort to win hearts and minds, Canada also has built 4,000 community schools, providing education to some 120,000 Afghan children.

Canada's wider engagement has come at a steep price. Canada has deployed more than 2,800 soldiers in the Kandahar region and has lost 138 soldiers since the start of the Afghan campaign in 2002.

The attacks come as a poll showed that two-thirds of Canadians see victory in Afghanistan as impossible, even with the imminent deployment of 30,000 additional US troops.

The Canadian military played down the significance of the attack, describing it as an isolated incident.

Despite the backlash, Canada's Conservative minority government, led by Stephen Harper, has pledged that Canadian troops will stay in Afghanistan until the end of 2011.

Questions also have been asked about the cost of the mission.

A parliamentary report last year estimated the war had cost Canada between 7.7 billion and 10.5 billion Canadian dollars since 2001 and said these costs could nearly double by the withdrawal of troops in 2011.

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