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Coalition launches airstrikes to secure Afghan highway

Afghan security forces backed by foreign military aircraft killed 24 Taliban rebels in a raid in southern Afghanistan overnight, an official said yesterday.

The operation in the southern province of Zabul was designed to secure a key highway to Kabul, he said.

“We had an operation against Taliban last night. During the operation, in which foreign military’s air force was used, 24 Taliban were killed and eight others were injured,” Zabul deputy governor Gulab Shah Alikhail said.

He said the operation started late on Friday and continued through early yesterday. Zabul is one of the regions where the Taliban, ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001, are active.

On Tuesday, 17 civilian road-builders were killed after the rebels attacked their convoy near the capital town of Qalat.

Three Taliban militants were killed in a subsequent operation against the attackers by Afghan and foreign security forces.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed two Indian road engineers in the southwest yesterday, in the second deadly attack on road builders in a week.

The attack, the latest in a spell of intermittent violence in recent weeks following a traditional winter lull, happened in Nimroz Province.

Provincial governor Ghulam Dastagir Azad said that the road crew was at work on a stretch of highway.

“The bomber got out of a car and then blew himself up. Two Indian engineers were killed,” Azad said.

One Indian and two Afghans were wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the Taliban have claimed numerous similar attacks against the government, foreign forces and aid and reconstruction projects.

Seventeen Afghan road workers were killed in a Taliban attack in the southern province of Zabul on Tuesday.

Most of the violence is in the south and east, near the border with Pakistan where the Taliban have sanctuaries in remote tribal areas.
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