KABUL (Agencies)
NATO-led air strike killed 20 Taliban insurgents on the outskirts of southern Kandahar city where alliance and Afghan forces began a joint offensive on Wednesday against the militants, the defense ministry said.
Two Afghan army officers were also killed during the operation in Arghandab district which lies some 20 km (12 miles) to the north of Kandahar city, it added.
Helicopter gunships and troops with small and heavy arms blasted a valley in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday as local and NATO forces launched a huge offensive against hundreds of Taliban insurgents, many of whom broke out of jail last week.
Some 600 Taliban fighters on Monday took over villages in Arghandab, on the northern outskirts of Kandahar city, days after freeing hundreds of inmates in an attack on the city's main jail, according to the Taliban and an Afghan official.
Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said militants had set their sights on Kandahar itself, the movement's birthplace, which lies about 20 km (12 miles) from Arghandab.
After massing troops, Afghan army and NATO-led forces have now started an offensive to flush out the Taliban from the villages, while stepping up security in Kandahar city and imposing a night curfew.
The developments in Kandahar come amid rising violence in the past two years, the bloodiest period since Taliban's removal from power in 2001 in Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, four Afghan police were killed when a remote controlled bomb hit their vehicle in the southeastern province of Khost, a provincial official said. Later, an abortive suicide attack aimed at a NATO convoy in the western province of Farah, killed two Afghan civilians and wounded ten others.
And on Tuesday, four British soldiers from NATO-led force were killed after a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Helmand, bordering Kandahar, the bloodiest single incident in one day against the British soldiers in Afghanistan.
One of the soldiers is believed to be a woman.
Thousands of families have fled Arghandab since Monday, when NATO warned that an operation would be staged to flush out the Taliban from the district, said Agha Lalai, a member of Kandahar's provincial council and a tribal chief of Arghandab.
The capture of the villages is part of the militants' latest show of power in Afghanistan, which is suffering its worst spell of violence since 2001 when the Taliban were ousted from power.
The flare-up comes despite the presence in Afghanistan of more than 60,000 foreign troops under the command of the U.S. military and NATO, as well as about 150,000 Afghan soldiers. |
