Eight militants were killed in a gunbattle after a suicide car bombing yesterday at the entrance to an airport outside the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, airport authorities said.
After the car bombing, a group of militants, using light weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, battled international forces for 30 minutes, according to information provided by the media office at the airport.
The Taliban claimed responsibility. In a text message to The Associated Press in Kabul, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said six suicide attackers killed 32 foreign and Afghan security forces at the airport, about 125km east of the Afghan capital.
PHOTO: AFP
The militant group frequently exaggerates its claims.
Ghafor Khan, a spokesman for the provincial police chief in Nangarhar Province, said that during the fighting, international forces blocked access to the area and helicopters patrolled overhead. The airport is situated on a main road on the outskirts of the city that leads to the Pakistani border.
NATO said there had been an incident at the airport, but said it could not immediately provide details.
Elsewhere in the east, US and Afghan forces battled hundreds of militants from an al-Qaeda-linked group for a third day on Tuesday in Kunar Province, the US military said.
Two US soldiers were killed on Sunday in the first day of the operation.
The attack in Kunar was directed against insurgents believed responsible for the roadside bombing that killed five US service members in the area on June 7, a US statement said.
The militants were believed to be members of the Haqqani group, a faction of the Taliban based in Pakistan that has close ties to al-Qaeda. About 600 US and Afghan troops are taking part in the operation, the US statement said.
On Tuesday in Kabul, an Afghan man working for the UN was shot and killed in his vehicle near a busy traffic circle.
The Afghan UN employee who died was driving a white pickup truck with the blue UN logo painted on the side. Another Afghan member of the UN staff, who was in the vehicle, was not wounded, the UN said.
The morning shooting occurred amid heavy traffic near Massoud circle, an intersection near the US Embassy and a US military base. Two windows on the truck were shattered and blood was spattered inside the car.
“The circumstances of the shooting are not yet clear,” a statement released by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said. “United Nations security teams are working with Afghan security institutions to assist investigations.”
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