KABUL, 8 August 2005 — Eight suspected Taleban militants were killed and three captured as Afghan and US-led troops raided their hideouts in southeastern Afghanistan, an official said yesterday. The raids by Afghan security forces, supported by members of the 19,000-strong US-led coalition, were conducted Saturday in the Shar-e-Safa district of Zabul province, said local police commander Ghulam Rasoul Aka. “During the operation we killed eight Taleban and captured three others,” he said. At least one policeman was wounded in the daylong gunbattle, he added. Coalition military officials declined immediate comment.
One Afghan policeman was killed and another wounded Saturday when militants attacked a police checkpoint in the eastern province of Wardak, said Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal. The “terrorists” fled after the attack, Mashal said. The US-led military said it detained a suspected suicide bomber near their base in Salerno near the Pakistani border as he tried to detonate a series of explosives attached to his body.
A candidate in next month’s parliamentary election has escaped an assassination attempt in northern Afghanistan, while in the east a man was killed in a clash between rival candidates, police said. Omer Safi escaped when a man opened fire as he walked through a crowd in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Saturday, they said. The attacker, identified as Reza Ali, was arrested at the scene, police official Sher Jan Durrani said. “The man has been arrested - investigation is ongoing,” he said.
Safi said the attack might have been planned by rival candidates from the former anti-Taleban mujahedeen warlords. “Maybe he was linked to the warlords who fear that they would not be able to contest me in the polls,” he told AFP. Separately a man was killed in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar province when supporters of two candidates clashed over campaign photos, said Abdul Qadir, the deputy provincial police chief.
In another encounter Saturday, Afghan troops killed a regional Taleban commander and captured six others in the Charchino district of the central province of Uruzgan, the Defense Ministry said yesterday. The man identified as Mulla Abdul Qader was killed when troops raided militants’ hide-outs in Charchino, a Taleban stronghold, it said.
Also on Saturday Afghan troops killed an “enemy combatant” in Qalat city in Zabul province, a separate statement said. Militants from the Taleban militia, whose fundamentalist regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in late 2001, have stepped up their attacks on US and government targets in recent months.
