Taliban commander killed in northern Afghanistan

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:11:41 GMT

DPA, Kabul -

A key Taliban commander was killed in northern Afghanistan when Taliban fighters attacked a NATO convoy as Afghan and foreign troops conducted an operation to clear an area of them, officials said Wednesday. Mullah Nader was killed late Tuesday in the Darzab district of Jawzjan province during the two-hour clearing operation by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan soldiers, provincial police chief Muhammad Khalil Aminzada said.

He said the commander was behind the killings of government officials in a nearby district four months ago. Ten officials, including the district chief and police chief, of the Qoshtipa district were killed in an ambush by the Taliban.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said a Taliban fighter was killed in a clash that erupted after Taliban fighters attacked a joint NATO and Afghan convoy. He did not give the name of the killed Taliban member.

The Taliban spokesman claimed that four NATO soldiers and five Afghan soldiers were also killed in the attack. He said the four NATO soldiers were Germans.

However, the NATO-led ISAF said it suffered no casualties. An ISAF statement said alliance forces killed a Taliban commander in Jawzjan as the militants attacked a convoy of Swedish and Finnish troops.

The forces called for air support and consequently a militant was killed and two more were injured, the ISAF statement said.

The Swedish and Finnish troops were unharmed in the fighting that lasted about an hour, it said.

Bordering Uzbekistan, Jawzjan is a relatively peaceful Afghan province, but a week ago, two aid workers were killed there in a roadside bombing.

Elsewhere, at least one police officer was killed and three were wounded as the Taliban attacked a World Food Programme convoy in the western province of Herat, police said.

Noor Khan Nikzad, a local police spokesman, said the Taliban attacked an aid convoy carrying food from Herat city to the Kushk-e-Kuhna district late Tuesday, resulting in the casualties among the police protecting the vehicles.

Taliban fighters said they killed seven police in the attack.

Western Afghanistan is another relatively peaceful part of the country, but the attack marked a further spread of the Taliban resistance to NATO forces.

The summer has seen Afghanistan's fiercest fighting in the past four years.

Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Wed Jul 1,  2009, 11:44 am ET

KABUL (AFP) –

A bomb blast in Afghanistan on Wednesday killed two soldiers in the NATO-led force deployed here to counter  Taliban resistance to NATO forces, the military said.

"Two International Security Assistance Force service members were killed and six wounded in an IED (improvised explosive device) strike in southern Afghanistan this afternoon," ISAF said in a statement that gave no details.

Thousands of US soldiers have pushed into the south, notably Helmand and Kandahar provinces, as part of a renewed effort to defeat a Taliban-led resistance which is its most intense in southern Afghanistan.

British and Canadian soldiers also serve in the south with soldiers from nearly 40 nations collected in the NATO-led force.

Wednesday's deaths would take to 158 the number of international soldiers to lose their lives in Afghanistan this year, most of them in attacks, according to icasualties.org which tracks the casualties.

There are nearly 90,000 foreign soldiers in the country, according to an estimate based on Pentagon figures.

This year has seen a 43 percent increase in the monthly average number of security incidents compared to last year, according to the United Nations.

The UN mission in Afghanistan recorded 800 civilian casualties to the end of May, a 24 percent increase over the same period in 2008, it said in a report delivered to the UN Security Council last week.

Major military operation under way in Afghanistan

 By Fisnik Abrashi And Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writers

July 1, 2009

KABUL –

Thousands of U.S. Marines and hundreds of Afghan troops moved into Taliban-held villages of southern Afghanistan with armor and helicopters Thursday in the first major operation under President Barack Obama's strategy to stabilize the country.

The offensive in the once-forgotten war was launched shortly after 1 a.m. Thursday local time in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold in the southern part of the country and the world's largest opium poppy producing area.

The goal is to clear Taliban fighters from the hotly contested Helmand River Valley before the nation's Aug. 20 presidential election.

Dubbed Operation Khanjar, or "Dagger," the military push was described by officials as the largest and fastest-moving of the war's new phase, involving nearly 4,000 of the newly arrived Marines and 650 Afghan forces. British forces last week led similar, but smaller, missions to fight and clear out insurgents in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar provinces.

"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said in a statement.

Southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold but also a region where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen.

The Pentagon is deploying 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in time for the elections and expects the total number of U.S. forces there to reach 68,000 by year's end. That is double the number of troops in Afghanistan in 2008, but still half of much as are now in Iraq.

Reversing the (Taliban resistance) momentum has been one of the key components of the new U.S. strategy, and thousands of additional troops allow commanders to push and stay into areas where international and Afghan troops had no permanent presence before.

While Marine troops were the bulk of the force, recently arrived U.S. Army helicopters were also taking part in the operation in Helmand province.

In March, Obama unveiled his strategy for Afghanistan, seeking to defeat al-Qaida terrorists there and in Pakistan with a bigger force and a new commander. Taliban and other extremists, including those allied with al-Qaida, routinely cross the two nations' border in Afghanistan's remote south.

The governor of Helmand province predicted the operation would be "very effective."

"The security forces will build bases to provide security for the local people so that they can carry out every activity with this favorable background, and take their lives forward in peace," Gov. Gulab Mangal said in a Pentagon news release.

Obama's strategy aims to boost the size of the Afghan army from 80,000 to 134,000 troops by 2011 — and greatly increase training by U.S. troops accompanying them — so the Afghan military can defeat Taliban insurgents and take control of the war. The White House also is pushing forces to set clear goals for a war gone awry, to provide more resources and to make a better case for international support.

There is no timetable for withdrawal, and the White House has not estimated how many billions of dollars its plan will cost.

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Jakes contributed to this report from Washington.

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