US-led coalition forces killed nearly a dozen Taliban militants in raids on rebel hideouts in dangerous southern Afghanistan, the coalition said in a statement on Thursday. Coalition forces were searching compounds in the Garmsir district of restive Helmand province targeting "Taliban foreign fighters" on Tuesday as they came under attack, said the statement.| That'd be "al-Qaeda." |
He said he could not confirm a claim by the governor of western Nimroz province, which borders Helmand, that 41 Taliban were killed in the clash.
Nimroz governor Ghulam Dastageer Azad said a Taliban commander named Mullah Tor Jan "with his 40 men were escaping to Pakistan from Nimroz via Helmand as they were attacked by the joint forces and they were all killed." He said 17 of them were buried in a district of Nimroz.
Separately in southern Zabul province Afghan and NATO forces attacked a Taliban hideout in Daychopan district overnight, killing three "foreign" Taliban and wounding six others, district governor Mullah Fazel Bari said.
In a separate incident a roadside bomb struck a police convoy Thursday on a highway in southern Wardak province, killing three policemen and wounding four others, provincial police chief Muzafarudin told AFP. The convoy was on its way from southern Ghazni province to neighbouring Wardak province when it was hit, he said. "Three police were martyred and four others were wounded in the blast," Muzafarudin, who goes by one name like many Afghans, told AFP.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the blast in a telephone call from