Afghan offensive toll touches 70

Kabul: Afghan security forces and international troops have killed 70 Taliban rebels in a week-long push to drive the militants from a southern district, an intelligence department statement said yesterday.

Dozens of Afghan soldiers supported by Nato-led military forces launched the hunt on May 5 in Nari Saraj district of insurgency-hit southern Helmand province, the statement said. Up to 70 rebels including five militant commanders were killed and more than 30 others were injured, it said. Taliban militants "are now cleared" from the area, the statement said. It did not say when the district was overrun by the rebels.

Hotspot

Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul was not immediately able to confirm the statement. Helmand is one of the biggest hotspots for the ultra-Islamic Taliban movement, which was ousted from government by US-led forces in late 2001 after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The rebels have seized several districts where policing is thin over the past year but have in most cases been driven out within days or weeks, often with heavy militant casualties. However, up to 30 civilians were killed when US-led warplanes bombed Sangin district some 25km from Nari Saraj earlier this week, according to Afghan officials. Meanwhile, new airstrikes in a volatile southern Afghan region have killed up to 10 Taliban fighters close to where villagers say about 40 civilians died during a battle.

Taliban fighters ambushed a patrol of US-led coalition and Afghan forces near Sangin in Helmand province on Thursday evening, and gunfire and airstrikes killed 10 militants, said Eizatullah Khan, the Sangin district chief.

A coalition spokesman, Sgt 1st Class Dean Welch, put the toll at six Taliban killed. He had no further details. Two villagers from Sangin said they knew of no civilian casualties caused by the fight. Airstrikes called in by US Special Forces fighting some 200 Taliban militants north of Sangin on Tuesday killed 21 civilians, government officials said.