A US soldier was injured on Friday while Afghan security forces arrested about a dozen suspected Taliban after a firefight in the southern Kandahar province. Separately, Taliban kidnapped an Indian technician and his driver in the same region. Police chief of the Kandahar province Rahmatullah Raufi said they were carrying out an anti-insurgents operation in the Panjwayee district of the province. The recent arrest was part of that operation.Raufi said the Afghan police and military were assisted by the coalition forces in the operation. The arrested, he said, had been shifted for investigations to the coalition base. He said before the arrest, the militants presented some resistance and in exchange of fire, three Afghan soldiers were wounded, who had been shifted to hospital. He said the operation was still going on.
Meanwhile, one technician of an Indian communication company and his Afghan colleague went missing while traveling in the neighbouring Zabul province on Friday. As soon as the news about the mission of the two workers spread, Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi telephoned to news services and said the two people had been kidnapped by the fighters. Ahmadi said they were kidnapped while traveling on the Kabul-Kandahar Highway in the Zabul province. In the same province, one US soldier was injured when a military helicopter made emergency landing, said a statement release from US' Bagram base in Kabul. The statement said chopper made hard landing due to technical fault. It said the wounded soldier had been medically evacuated to a US medical facility, where his condition is satisfactory.