US and Afghan forces killed 10 Taliban militants in a raid in western Afghanistan after the insurgents beheaded four guards working for the US military, the Afghan army said yesterday.
US and Afghan soldiers engaged the insurgents for a full day on Saturday in the western district of Shindand, the commander of Afghan army commando forces in western Afghanistan said.
“We together with US Marines launched an operation against insurgents as a result of which 10 Taliban were killed,” Zainudin Sharifi said.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force has a military base in Shindand, part of the relatively peaceful province of Herat, which shares a long border with Iran.
Sharifi did not say when the insurgents had captured and beheaded the four Afghan guards or provide any other details.
There are around 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, which is in the grip of a bloody Taliban insurgency.
More than two-thirds of the international forces are from the US and their deployment is to peak at 150,000 in August under a strategy designed to bring a swift end to the conflict.
Most of the extra troops are deploying in the south, the heartland of the insurgency, with particular attention paid to the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand.
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