Seven Taliban militants killed in Afghanistan: officials
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — Seven Taliban militants have been killed in Afghanistan at the weekend after two separate attacks on police posts in the south and east, officials said Sunday.
In eastern Nangarhar province, four militants were killed in an exchange of fire early Sunday after attacking a police post near the border with Pakistan, provincial spokesman Noor Agha Zwak told AFP
Three others were killed on Saturday in the former Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala in restive Helmand province, police said.
"They attacked our police post. Our guys returned fire and three Taliban were killed," provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP.
Taliban rebels stormed and captured Musa Qala early last year, making it their biggest military base from where they directed attacks on Afghan and foreign troops across the war-ravaged country.
Afghan and NATO forces recaptured the remote town in a large-scale operation involving thousands of troops in December. Two NATO soldiers were killed in the fighting.
Elsewhere, the US-led coalition, which has thousands of troops fighting here alongside a 40,000-strong NATO-led force, said it had killed "several" militants on Friday in an operation in eastern Khost province.
"A number of armed militants were killed when they posed a credible threat to coalition forces," the military said in a statement. Five other militants were captured, it added.
The Taliban, ousted from government in 2001 in a US-led invasion, are waging an insurgency to topple the US-backed government in Kabul and oust tens of thousands of foreign troops based here to fight them back.
Last year was the deadliest of their campaign, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to a report delivered to the UN Security Council this month.
About 1,500 were civilians, it said. There were about 160 suicide attacks last year, up from 123 the previous year.
