OTTAWA — As a piper played Amazing Grace, comrades carried Pte. Kevin Dallaire's flag-draped coffin to burial Friday in the National Military Cemetery in Ottawa.

Dallaire, 22, Sgt. Vaughn Ingram and Cpl. Bryce Jeffrey Keller were killed Aug. 3 in a rocket-propelled grenade attack during fighting with Taliban forces west of Kandahar in Afghanistan.

All were with the 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, based in Edmonton.

They were the 20th, 21st and 22nd Canadian soldiers to be killed in Afghanistan since 2002.

A bugler sounded the Last Post and Reveille and three volleys of rifle shots were fired over the grave as Dallaire was laid to rest with full military honours.

Dallaire's mother, Diane received the flag that draped her son's coffin while father Gaetan was presented with his headdress, scabbard and medals.

As family and friends walked solemnly from the gravesite, Diane laid her head on the grave of Capt. Nicola Goddard, who had served in Dallaire's battle group in Afghanistan.

Goddard was killed in Afghanistan on May 17. Armed Forces spokesperson Sylvain Chalifour said Diane had met Goddard in Canada and had specifically asked to see her grave.

Quietly watching the ceremony were Deborah and Gerald Warren, parents of Cpl. Jason Warren, 29, who was killed July 22 in Afghanistan and was buried in the same cemetery Aug. 3. The Ottawa couple had come to visit their son's grave and were unaware beforehand of the latest burial.

They said they were very sad for the Dallaires, especially given his young age.

The Warrens said there are no other parents in the area who had lost children in Afghanistan, but that a support network of family members across Canada is quietly coming together as the deaths mount.

"There is a group forming out there. It is unfortunate, but it is only natural that it will form," Gerald Warren said.

Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, 43, one of four UN observers killed July 25 in Lebanon, was to be buried Friday in Burlington, Ont.