The US military said yesterday that troops killed 35 militants in clashes and air strikes in Afghanistan, the latest in a recent upsurge of heavy battles in insurgent strongholds across the war-torn country.
The fighting erupted on Thursday when Afghan and US-led troops came under heavy fire while on patrol in southern Zabul Province, the military said.
“The combined forces returned fire and requested air support, killing 35 and wounding 13,” it said in a statement.
The remaining militants fled, and the wounded treated and taken into Afghan army custody, it said.
No troops or civilians were reported hurt, the statement said. The military did not say whether the militants were suspected Taliban, but fighters from that group operate in Zabul and other southern provinces.
It was impossible to independently confirm details of the clash in Zabul’s Daychopan district.
The province borders Pakistan’s Baluchistan, which is rife with regional insurgency and where attacks have been blamed on Taliban militants. Daychopan is about 150km from the frontier.
Pakistan has since late last month pressed a renewed anti-Taliban offensive on its side of the border thqat Afghanistan has welcomed, with the defense ministry pledging to cooperate in the fight against Islamist extremists.
Fighting linked to a Taliban-led insurgency has picked up there in recent weeks, with rebels stepping up bomb attacks and security forces hitting back with major operations.
The Afghan and US militaries also reported heavy fighting on Thursday, further east in an area of Paktika Province that also borders Baluchistan.
Acting on intelligence, security forces raided an encampment where a wanted commander of the Taliban’s Haqqani network was believed to be meeting other militants.
The defense ministry said 35 militants were killed in the clash. Six blew themselves up to avoid capture, it said. The US military said around 30 died.
It is not clear if the wanted commander, named Sangeen, was among the dead.
The network was founded by Afghan Soviet resistance commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, but is now believed to be led by his sons, notably Siraj Haqqani, who is said to be one of the Taliban’s most powerful leaders.
Siraj Haqqani reportedly admitted to an attack targeting a five-star hotel in Kabul in January last year and the attempted assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai at a military parade in the capital in April last year.
In another significant clash, the US and Afghan militaries said they killed 60 militants last week in the southern province of Helmand, a den of Taliban activity and opium production.
Troops also “seized the single-largest drug cache by Afghan-led forces in Afghanistan to date,” the statement said.
The haul included tonnes of opium poppy seeds, opium as well as morphine, heroin and hashish.
Meanwhile, Washington is set to release video showing that Taliban fighters were the target of a bombing raid that killed a disputed number of Afghan civilians earlier this month, a top US military official said.
US General David Petraeus said the video footage of the May 4 to May 5 fighting in the Farah Province, recorded from a B1 bomber, “very clearly shows bombs hitting individuals who are the Taliban.”
Petraeus also told National Public Radio in the USthat the Pentagon planned to release the video at a press briefing “in the coming days.”
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