A NATO airstrike killed a Taliban commander responsible for a suicide attack on a U.S. aid program in northern Afghanistan, police said, while a raid killed another insurgent who smuggled in foreign fighters through Iran, officials said Friday.International troops working with Afghan forces say they have killed or captured dozens of senior insurgent figures since April as they aggressively step up operations against the Taliban leadership. However, those successes haven't slowed the pace of militant attacks, which continue daily, killing dozens of people each month.
In the northern province of Kunduz, a precision airstrike killed a local Taliban commander who uses the alias Qari Latif, the provincial police chief said.
Latif died along with 12 other insurgents while they met in a field under a tree
| That would be vaguely proletariat enough for the Rab to go to work, but only if it were deep in the middle of the night when law abiding folk are in the deepest phase of REM sleep. |
NATO confirmed an airstrike targeted a senior insurgent commander who was at a meeting to choose a new Taliban "shadow governor" in a Kunduz district, but the alliance said in a statement it was still investigating the outcome.
The international force said the insurgent chief had boasted of being behind a suicide car bomb on a USAID station in Kunduz city earlier this month that killed two civilians and wounded seven others.
"The Kunduz attack was a shameful act against an organization that was here only to provide assistance to the Afghan people," said Lt. Col. Ian Tudlong, joint command chief of operations for the NATO-led force