SANGIN VALLEY: NATO-led troops killed 75 suspected insurgents on the first day of an offensive against Taliban militants in a valley in southern Afghanistan, a British military officer said on Tuesday. The militants died on Monday, when British, Danish and Afghan troops fought their way up the Sangin Valley in Helmand province, said Maj Dominic Biddick, who commanded a company of British troops in the operation. Biddick said the troops detained several more suspected militants and discovered an arms cache during “a full day of fighting”. One British soldier was wounded, he said, without providing any details of his condition. “The operation went better than most people had anticipated,” Biddick said. “At one point, there were six companies in clashes at the same time.” His tally of 75 insurgents killed could not be independently verified.
| “We’ve killed up to 56 Taliban, including lots of Pakistanis.” |
“We’ve killed up to 56 Taliban, including lots of Pakistanis,” said General Moheydin Ghori from the Afghan army. Local and international forces are trying to “create security conditions in the Sangin valley so that meaningful reconstruction and development can occur”, said an ISAF spokesman.On Monday, the US military reported that 136 suspected militants were killed in three days of fighting in western Herat province. But police said on Tuesday at least 30 civilians, including women and children, were among the dead after clashes in Herat. The fighting erupted in Herat province’s Shindand district on Friday and on Sunday. “There were at least 30 civilians including women and children among those killed in Shindand’s fighting,” Herat police chief Mohammad Shafiq Fazli said. Shindand governor Khodadad Erfani also said there were civilians among the dead, “but we don’t have the number”.
Separately, US-led coalition warplanes killed four militants who had attacked a government building in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said on Tuesday. In another incident, Afghan security forces supported by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force detained 11 suspected militants, some of them linked to Al Qaeda, a governor said. The casualties occurred after nearly a dozen militants attacked the administration office of eastern Khost province’s Spera district late Monday with rockets and gunfire, it said. “In response to a request from the (police), coalition forces responded with close air support, killing four insurgents,” the statement said, adding seven more rebels were wounded.