KABUL (AFP) — The US-led coalition in Afghanistan said Friday its troops had killed around two dozen militants after coming under attack, while Afghan officials reported another dozen rebel deaths.
Militants had opened fire on a coalition base in the southern province of Uruzgan on Thursday with mortars, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades launched from several locations, the force said in a statement.
Two Afghan security guards were killed and the troops responded, including by calling in air power, it said.
"Afghan National Security Forces and coalition forces killed more than a dozen militants after a coalition base in ... Uruzgan province was attacked Thursday," the statement said.
An assault on a coalition outpost in the remote northeast last month left nine US soldiers dead and 15 wounded in one of the worst attacks on international troops working to defeat a Taliban-led insurgency.
Also Thursday, troops in the eastern province of Paktika were attacked while looking for militants involved in moving foreign fighters between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a separate statement said.
"The forces responded with small-arms fire, killing the militants," it said.
"Almost a dozen militants were killed and two were detained."
Afghan police and government officials said meanwhile that around 13 rebels were also killed in various incidents in the southern and western provinces of Farah, Badghis and Nimroz Thursday and Friday.
The battles were in remote areas and it was impossible to independently verify what happened.
Fighting between insurgents and troops has intensified this summer, with several fierce battles reported across the country, many resulting in high death tolls.
The coalition announced Thursday that it had killed more than 100 Taliban militants in three days of clashes in the southern province of Helmand.
Civilians are also increasingly victims.
Three Afghan civilians -- two children and a woman -- were shot dead by German and Afghan forces Thursday when two vehicles failed t stop at a checkpost in the northern province of Kunduz, military forces said.
The soldiers were "forced to fire at the first vehicle when it refused to stop, fearing an insurgent attack," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said. Germany confirmed its forces were involved.
This comes a week after more than 90 civilians, most of them children, were killed in US-led coalition air strikes in Herat province in the west, according to investigations by the Afghan government and United Nations.
The US military disputes the number.
There are nearly 70,000 international soldiers in Afghanistan, helping the government to root out extremists including those from the hardline Taliban movement that was in government between 1996 and 2001.
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