Clashes in southern Afghanistan in recent days have killed 32 militants, including two Taliban commanders, officials said.
Separately, Canada's prime minister has unveiled a proposal to withdraw his country's forces from the former Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan in 2011, a move that largely accedes to opposition demands amid threats of an early election.
Afghan and US-led coalition troops fought on Wednesday with militants north of Musa Qala in Helmand Province, leaving 30 suspected Taliban fighters dead, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
PHOTO: AP
Coalition aircraft bombed militant hide-outs during the five-hour battle, it said.
The coalition said 11 militants were detained and 450kg of heroin were confiscated during the operation, but it did not report any casualties. The Defense Ministry claim of 30 deaths could not be independently verified.
A large weapons cache and a heroin processing lab were also destroyed, the coalition said.
Taliban militants were in control of Musa Qala for much of last year before Afghan, US and British troops regained control of the town and its surrounding areas in December.
On Thursday, a remote controlled roadside bomb hit a police convoy in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, killing a policeman and wounding four others, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.
Helmand is the world's largest opium-producing region, and officials estimate that up to 40 percent of proceeds from the nation's drug trade are used to fund the insurgency.
On Monday, Afghan and NATO-led troops attacked and killed regional Taliban commanders Mullah Abdul Matin and Mullah Karim Agha, who were responsible for a number of suicide bombing missions in Helmand, the alliance said on Thursday.
"As a result of this successful attack, the Taliban's networks have suffered another severe setback," said Brigadier General Carlos Branco, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
The Taliban did not immediately confirm the deaths.
In neighboring Kandahar Province, authorities detained seven men suspected of involvement in the suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people on Sunday at a dog fight in the provincial capital, Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid said.
Afghan intelligence agents rounded up the suspects on Wednesday in two separate operations in Kandahar City and in Arghandab District to the north, Khalid said.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government is trying to extend past February next year the military operation in Kandahar Province. Harper's minority government is under pressure to withdraw Canada's troops after the deaths of 78 soldiers and a diplomat.
"It seems clear that we have moved significantly toward the kind of bipartisan consensus that can be presented to parliament for ratification," Harper said.
The new proposal, like the earlier version, is conditional on NATO supplying additional forces and equipment to back up Canadian troops in Kandahar. But while the earlier proposal failed to set a withdrawal date after the mission ends in 2011, the new version sets that date at December of that year.
Canada's military mission in the south is set to expire in February next year unless it is extended by parliament. An agreement would avoid an early election over the issue. Next month's vote on extending the mission is a confidence motion that would trigger early elections if rejected. Other votes on other issues could also trigger an election.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS