Kabul - A key Taliban commander was killed in northern
Afghanistan when militants attacked a NATO convoy as Afghan and
foreign troops conducted an operation to clear an area of militants,
officials said Wednesday.
Mullah Nader was killed late Tuesday in the Darzab district of
Jawzjan province during the two-hour clearing operation by the
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan
soldiers, provincial police chief Muhammad Khalil Aminzada said.
He said the commander was behind the killings of government
officials in a nearby district four months ago. Ten officials,
including the district chief and police chief, of the Qoshtipa
district were killed in an ambush by the Taliban.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said a Taliban fighter was
killed in a clash that erupted after militants attacked a joint NATO
and Afghan convoy. He did not give the name of the killed Taliban
member.
The Taliban spokesman claimed that four NATO soldiers and five
Afghan soldiers were also killed in the attack. He said the four NATO
soldiers were Germans.
However, the NATO-led ISAF said it suffered no casualties. An ISAF
statement said alliance forces killed a Taliban commander in Jawzjan
as the militants attacked a convoy of Swedish and Finnish troops.
The forces called for air support and consequently a militant was
killed and two more were injured, the ISAF statement said.
The Swedish and Finnish troops were unharmed in the fighting that
lasted about an hour, it said.
Bordering Uzbekistan, Jawzjan is a relatively peaceful Afghan
province, but a week ago, two aid workers were killed there in a
roadside bombing.
The Taliban have stepped up their attacks in recent months across
Afghanistan with the violence spreading to the relatively peaceful
north as the country moves closer to the August presidential election.
Elsewhere, at least one police officer was killed and three were
wounded as the Taliban attacked a World Food Programme convoy in the
western province of Herat, police said.
Noor Khan Nikzad, a local police spokesman, said the Taliban
attacked an aid convoy carrying food from Herat city to the
Kushk-e-Kuhna district late Tuesday, resulting in the casualties
among the police protecting the vehicles.
The Taliban said they killed seven police in the attack.
Western Afghanistan is another relatively peaceful part of the
country, but the attack marked a further spread of the Taliban
insurgency.
The summer has seen Afghanistan's fiercest fighting in the past
four years.
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