A visibly shaken Radio-Canada reporter on Thursday struggled to describe a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan that killed two soldiers and an Afghan interpreter and injured two others, including his friend and fellow journalist.

Patrice Roy, the well-known Ottawa bureau chief for the CBC's French-language network, told reporters how he was sitting in the third seat of the light armoured personnel carrier when a huge blast pushed him forward and tore the vehicle apart, killing the medic seated in front of him.

Radio-Canada reporter Patrice Roy speaks to reporters in Kandahar city on Thursday of the 'huge blast.'
(CBC)

A second soldier and the interpreter were also killed, while Roy said another soldier suffered a head wound. Roy's colleague, Charles Dubois, suffered a serious leg injury.

"We were at the end of a very difficult mission," Roy said in the first eyewitness account to emerge a day after the blast.  

"They told us, 'The Taliban won't shoot because we're so many tanks. It's a demonstration of force, so they will run,'" he said, often sighing and casting his eyes downward during the interview.

"They didn't run." 

Roy recalled how the group of vehicles moved back and forth and circled a small village for several hours trying to find a way to get to the objective on the mountain, about 50 kilometres west of Kandahar. 

The veteran journalist described soldiers around him remaining calm while receiving fire from insurgents.  

They were told the road to the objective had been cleared by a minesweeper, he said.

"I was writing my stand-up just seconds before the blast," Roy said. "It was a huge blast. It's a little bit difficult to describe."

Roy did not comment on the extent of the leg injury to Ottawa-based Radio-Canada cameraman Dubois, who previously has been assigned to cover stories in Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti.

"He will be fine," Roy said. "He's a strong man. He's a very strong man."

Capt. Adam Thomson, a spokesman for the Department of National Defence, told CBC News Thursday that Dubois's injury was the first instance in which a journalist embedded with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan had been seriously injured. 

Roy planned to leave his six-week assignment early to accompany Dubois to Germany for treatment.  

"We were supposed to play squash on our way back," Roy said. "I said to him, 'Maybe not this time, but in one year, we'll play squash together.' "

Roy said he just wanted to be near his own family, who he initially feared would hear rumours circulating of a journalist wounded in Afghanistan.

"I felt terribly bad and was worried for my children to see the news in Canada," he said.

Canada deployed troops to Afghanistan in 2002 and currently has about 2,500 soldiers serving in the NATO-led international force.

The deaths on Wednesday bring the total number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2002 to 69.