Nearly 80 suspected Taliban militants were
killed in coalition airstrikes and clashes with Afghan forces, while four
Afghan policemen were killed in a roadside bomb blast in southern region,
officials said Wednesday, dpa
reported. More than 40 suspected Taliban militants were
killed in Sarobi district of south-eastern province of Paktika on Tuesday
afternoon after the militants ambushed a police patrol in the area, Mohammad
Akram Khepilwak, provincial governor told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
He said five policemen were wounded and the ground forces called coalition
airstrikes on the Taliban near the border with Pakistan.
"Coalition forces bombed the Taliban and killed more than 40 militants,"
he said, adding that the militants' dead bodies were still on the battlefield.
Another group of Taliban fighters attacked a police patrol in Kheshawand
district of the same Paktika province on Wednesday morning, wounding a
policeman, Khepilwak said.
He said that the police forces fought back and killed eight suspected
militants.
In a separate incident, Taliban militants attacked a police post in Nad Ali
district in southern Helmand province on Tuesday night, but suffered 18
fatalities, Mohammad Hussain Andewal, provincial police chief, said.
He claimed that no Afghan police forces were killed or wounded in the attack.
A suicide bomber attacked near a British military base in Lashkargah, the
capital of Helmand province on Tuesday, killing himself and wounding three
civilians, Andewal said.
British troops were not in the area when the explosion occurred, he said.
US-led coalition forces claimed Wednesday to have killed more than a dozen
Taliban insurgents in volatile southern Afghanistan, while another four were
detained by the combined forces elsewhere.
"The troops engaged the militants with small arms, machine guns, and close
air support, killing more than a dozen militants," the statement said.
No Afghan or coalition soldiers were hurt in the incident, the military
claimed.
Due to the remoteness of the area, it was difficult to independently verify the
US military's assertions.
Four police troops were also killed when their vehicle was struck by a roadside
bomb in Gilan district of southern Ghazni province on Tuesday, Sayed Ismail
Jahangir, spokesman for provincial governor said.
Four suspected militants were detained Tuesday by Afghan and coalition forces
in the south-eastern province of Paktika, near the border with Pakistan, the statement said.
The combined forces were targeting a rebel who was facilitating the movement of
foreign fighters and weapons from Pakistan into Afghanistan, it said.
Afghan and US officials have accused the Taliban of having bases inside
Pakistan, from where they cross the border and stage attacks on Afghan and
international forces.
More than 3,500 people - mostly insurgents - have been killed in violence in
Afghanistan so far this year, according to figures provided by Afghan and
foreign military sources.