Three Afghan construction workers were killed in a roadside blast in eastern Afghanistan while at least 17 Taliban fighters were killed in a clash and US military airstrike, officials said Monday, dpa reported.
Three other road construction workers were wounded in the attack Monday in the Sarkani district of Kunar province, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The statement held "enemies of Afghanistan," a term often used by Afghan officials to describe Taliban militants, as responsible for the attack, which happened in an area close to the border with Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Mullah Dastigir and eight of his fighters were killed Sunday night in a US military airstrike in Darya-ye-Morghab village in the western province of Badghis near the border with Turkmenistan, the US military said in a statement.
"Once the exact location of the militants was confirmed, forces engaged the target compound with a precision airstrike, destroying a building and killing the militants inside," it said.
The Afghan Defence Ministry claimed 12 rebels, including two of their commanders, Mullah Dastagir and Mullah Baz Mohammad, were killed in the operation.
Taliban spokesmen were not available to confirm the incident. Because of the remoteness of the area, it was difficult to verify the claimed death toll independently.
Both the US and Afghan statements said the dead militants were involved in an ambush in November that left 13 Afghan soldiers dead.
Meanwhile, General Mohaiyodin Ghori, an Afghan army commander in southern Afghanistan, said his troops, backed by NATO forces, killed eight militants Sunday in the Nad Ali district of Helmand province.
The clash took place in the Khoshal area when a joint Afghan-NATO patrol came under fire from militants, he said.
The bodies of the militants along with their weapons were left behind on the battlefield, Ghori said, adding that there were no Afghan or NATO casualties.
The Helmand incident happened on the same day that NATO announced the deaths of two of its soldiers who were killed in separate military actions in the south.
The militants have steadily gained power and extended their territory to larger swaths of the country in the past three years. They turned 2008 into the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since 2001, when the Taliban was ousted from power in a US-led invasion.
More than 5,000 people - mostly insurgents but also including nearly 300 international soldiers - were killed in the conflict last year.
...