OTTAWA, May 17 (Xinhua) -- A female Canadian soldier was killedin southern Afghanistan on Wednesday as politicians at home debated whether to extend the Afghan mission by two years.

    Military officials have identified her as Capt. Nichola Goddard.She had been serving in Afghanistan with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and before that, was stationed with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in Shilo, Manitoba.

    Goddard died early Wednesday morning in a military operation against Taliban forces, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a question session in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

    The military action took place near Kandahar, where the majority of Canada's 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan are serving.

    Canadian soldiers had been called in to support Afghan troops fighting in the Panjwai region, about 24 kilometers west of Kandahar.

    Word of Goddard's death slowly filtered through the base as soldiers attended a morale-boosting concert featuring a number of Canadian musicians. She is the first Canadian woman to die in combat since the Second World War.

    The latest fatality raises Canada's death toll in Afghanistan to 16 soldiers and one diplomat since the mission started in 2002.

    The Canadian parliament is to decide by late Wednesday on whether to extend Canada's deployment in the country until 2009 from its currently scheduled end date of February 2007.

    A recent poll suggested that a majority of Canadians were against deployment of troops in the war-torn Afghanistan.

    The poll, conducted by The Strategic Counsel earlier this month,found 54 percent of Canadians were against the Afghan mission.

    Of those, 23 percent are strongly opposed to it -- an increase of eight percentage points from the previous survey. Enditem