About 100 Taliban raided Afghan police posts and a district government headquarters northeast of Kabul on Tuesday, in the heaviest fighting in an area so close to the capital since 2001. Earlier on Tuesday, a bomb blew up a UN vehicle in the city of Kandahar killing four Nepali contractors and an Afghan driver. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Separately, four children were killed in a blast at a school in the city of Herat. The Taliban launched coordinated attacks in the rugged Tagab district of Kapisa province, 70 km from Kabul. Heavy fighting went on for hours and the government requested and received US military support, the provincial governor said.
Separately, a top US general said American forces intercepted Iranian weapons headed to the Taliban in Afghanistan in the last month, but he did not know who had sent them. “It is not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible but we have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran,” said Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We do not know with the same clarity we know in Iraq who is delivering those weapons, who is involved,” he told reporters in Washington.