17 cops, 10 Taliban die in south Afghanistan clashes
More than a dozen Afghan police officers have been killed and three others injured as they engaged members of the Taliban militant group in the country’s troubled southern province of Helmand.
A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 17 policemen lost their lives as fierce exchange of gunfire broke out between Afghan security forces and Taliban militants in Musa Qala district, located about 165 kilometers (102 miles) north of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, late on Friday and lasted for several hours.
The source added that three Afghan policemen also sustained injuries, while 10 Taliban terrorists were killed and many more injured.
He further noted that Taliban militants also set three police vehicles on fire, and took away two others, loaded with various kinds of munitions, with them.
Haji Janan, a tribal elder, asserted that Taliban terrorists killed 15 Afghan policemen during the fighting, and later abducted five others.
He warned that Musa Qala would fall into Taliban hands if Kabul government failed to dispatch reinforcement troops to the district in a few hours.
Meanwhile, Afghan army soldiers have killed more than 110 Taliban militants and wounded dozens more during clean-up operations across the country over the past 48 hours.
Afghanistan's Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi, in a statement released on Saturday, said 114 militants were killed and 103 others injured in the operations.
The statement added that as many as 14 Afghan soldiers were also killed during the offensives.
The developments came only days after at least 30 Arab and two Taliban militants were killed in two separate US-led airstrikes in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Paktia.
The Paktia governor’s media office said in a statement that foreign forces launched an airborne attack in Khoshamand district of the province lately, killing the Arab militants.
The two Taliban militants lost their lives as a military aircraft targeted their hideout in Yusufkhel district.
Afghanistan faces a security challenge years after the United States and its allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed Taliban from power, but many areas in the Asian country are still beset with killings, bombings and armed clashes.
MP/NN/HRB
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