Over 100 rebels were killed in military operations in southwestern Afghanistan, authorities said Saturday, as dozens more people were killed or injured in other violence throughout the country, the AFP reported.
The interior ministry said Afghan security forces backed by foreign military allies killed the rebels during two days of operations to retake the remote district of Bakwa in southwestern province of Farah.
The rebels had captured the district eight months ago, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.
"During two days of operations more than 100 enemies of peace and stability were killed," he said, adding that the district was recaptured from the rebels on Friday.
"We captured the district after eight months of enemy control," the spokesman said. Security forces were still chasing the rebels in the district, he added.
He said five "prominent" Taliban commanders were among the dead.
The Taliban, the main militant group behind a spiralling insurgency, have taken control of remote towns and districts but have been easily pushed back by Afghan and foreign security forces.
Farah, which borders Iran, has seen some of the bloodiest violence in a two-year insurgency, which has mainly taken place in the country's south and east.
The rebels stormed and captured a district centre in the central province of Ghazni on Thursday and were pushed back by Afghan security forces a day later, according to authorities.
About 18 other Taliban-linked militants were killed in other operations by Afghan and foreign troops in southern Kandahar province, a police commander said.
"In the past three days we've killed 16 Taliban including two commanders in Zhari and Panjwayi district. They were killed in an operation launched to clear the area of the enemy," the Kandahar police chief, Sayed Agha Saqeb said.
Two other rebels were killed in a gunfight with police elsewhere in Kandahar, he told AFP.
A suspected suicide car bomb meanwhile injured four NATO-led soldiers and as many Afghan civilians Saturday in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, officials said.
Bashary said the bomber rammed an explosive-laden car into a NATO-led military convoy.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the casualties but said the explosion appeared to have been from an improvised explosive device, a home-made bomb often used by Taliban in their attacks on military targets.
The area was later sealed off by US troops, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
"I saw an American humvee at the middle of the road badly destroyed. It's laying upside down in the middle of the road," the correspondent said.
The bombing came two days after a suicide car bomber killed three Afghan civilians in Kabul. The Taliban claimed both attacks.
Two other ISAF soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb on Saturday in Paktia province, a troubled region in the country's east bordering Pakistan, ISAF spokesman Carlos Branco said.
And suspected Taliban militants gunned down a district governor and his body guard in southern Zabul province overnight, deputy provincial governor Gulab Shah Alikhail told AFP.
In the same region, an Afghan soldier was killed in a firefight with militants in Shiwak district, Afghan army spokesman colonel Mohammad Gul told AFP. And the defence ministry said another Afghan soldier was killed on Friday when their base came under heavy fire from militants in Helmand province, the heartland of Taliban insurgency in the country's south.
Two other troopers were wounded in the attack, it said in a statement.
About 70,000 US and NATO troops are helping Afghan forces fight back Taliban rebels, who have stepped up attacks in recent weeks.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed claimed responsibility for the Jalalabad bombing in a telephone call to AFP from an unknown location.
"One of our brave mujahedin (holy warrior) carried out a suicide attack on American forces in Jalalabad," he said.
The Taliban were ousted in an invasion led by the United States in late 2001 after the Islamic rebels refused to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks on the US that year.