Kabul - US military forces claimed on Wednesday to have
killed 25 suspected Taliban fighters in separate clashes in eastern
and southern Afghanistan, while 19 other rebels were detained by
joint Afghan and international troops, officials said.
In the latest clash, US-led troops killed 15 suspected militants
and detained six others in a raid in Zherai district of southern
Kandahar province on Wednesday morning, the US military said in a
statement.
The killed and detained insurgents were involved in making
homemade roadside bomb in the region, it added.
Meanwhile, the combined forces targeted a senior Taliban commander
in Zormat district of the south-eastern province of Paktia on
Tuesday, the US military said in a separate statement.
As the forces approached the targeted area, a group of militants
barricaded inside a compound fired on the troops with small arms
fire, the statement said, adding the joint forces returned fire and
killed five armed militants.
The targeted commander was 'believed to act as a liaison between
the al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist networks, assisting with the
movement of foreign fighters into Afghanistan,' the statement said,
but did not elaborate if the commander was among those killed.
Separately, coalition forces killed another five militants and
detained four others in an operation that targeted the Haqqani
network sub-commander in Sabari district of the neighbouring province
of Paktika on Tuesday, the statement said. Haqqani is an associate
group of Taliban insurgents.
During the operation, the militants fired on combined forces from
inside a compound, it said, adding that troops waited until eight
Afghan women and eleven children exited from the building and then
killed the militants inside the building.
In southern Helmand province, Afghan army soldiers detained nine
suspected Taliban insurgents in an operation in Nawa district of the
province on Tuesday, the Afghan defence ministry said in a statement.
Several heavy weapons and ammunition were discovered by the troops
during the search of the suspected militants' house, it added.
Southern and eastern provinces of the country, which lie on the
border with Pakistan, are the main hub for Taliban activities in the
country. Afghanistan has around 2,400 kilometres of porous border
with Pakistan, an area that is mostly ungoverned with militants
crossing the border freely.
Taliban militants have stepped up their attacks on Afghan and some
70,000 international forces in the country. Most of the attacks are
initiated by the militants, who often use hit-and-run tactics.
The US-led coalition also targets the militants in various areas
of the eastern and southern regions in preemptive ways to weaken the
insurgents' offensive capability.
The Afghanistan conflict so far this year killed more than 4,000
people - mostly insurgents, but including more than 200 foreign
soldiers and hundreds of Afghan security forces.
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