KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 15 April 2006 — Six Taleban guerrillas were killed in an airstrike by US-led troops in eastern Afghanistan yesterday after blasts elsewhere in the country killed three policemen and wounded two British troops. The airstrike was carried out in Kunar province as part of Operation Lion launched on Wednesday to flush out militants from the area, officials said.
Afghanistan has seen a surge of attacks on Afghan and foreign forces since the Taleban announced last month they had launched a spring offensive.
Three policemen were killed yesterday when a remote-control bomb hit their truck on a main road outside the southeastern town of Khost, said provincial police chief Mohammad Ayoub. Three policemen were wounded, he said.
Coalition helicopters fired rockets into an area where the Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar once lived as part of a fierce battle between rebels and Afghan security forces.
Dozens of Canadian coalition soldiers were on alert with hundreds of Afghan security forces outside Singesar village in Ziari district, about 40 kilometers southwest of Kandahar, while the choppers worked overhead, an AFP reporter said.
Fighting erupted between about 60 suspected Taleban rebels and hundreds of Afghan police and soldiers in the area in the morning, said Gen. Rahmatullah Raufi, chief military commander for southern Afghanistan. He had no word on casualties. Residents said they believed up to 200 Taleban could have been involved. Singesar was once the home of the Taleban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
An Afghan officer said toward evening that it appeared the Taleban had fled and troops were expected to enter the area. “We believe they might have fled the area and we will start a clearance operation,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, two British soldiers from a NATO-led peacekeeping force were among three people wounded in suicide car-bomb attack in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of the southern province of Helmand. None of the wounds were life threatening, a British spokeswoman said.
Jet fighters pounded the area, and fierce fighting was underway. Fleeing villagers said they saw plumes of black smoke rising and the main highway linking Kandahar to western provinces was also cut. At least on Afghan soldier was killed in the fighting, a provincial official said.
In central Uruzgan province, US-led troops and Afghan soldiers killed two insurgents and captured two, who the US military said had been recruiting suicide bombers.
Separately, Taleban gunmen killed a Muslim cleric in the Kandahar province as he was walking home from a mosque on Thursday evening, officials said. The Taleban has targeted pro-government clerics over the past year.
Purported Taleban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Yousaf, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that one of the hard-line Islamic movement’s suicide bombers, identified only as Abdullah, carried out the attack.
