A military operation in which a British soldier died in Afghanistan at the weekend left about 30 Taliban fighters dead, Afghan police said on Sunday. The British forces, however, could not confirm the rebel toll but said “possibly a significant number” were killed in the fighting in the Kajaki district of the southern province of Helmand that started on Saturday. “In the two-day operation 30 Taliban were killed and another 20 were wounded,” Helmand police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail said. He said the operation concluded on Sunday. “Some of the insurgents’ bodies are still left at the battle site,” he said.
Lieutenant Colonel Rory Bruce of the British task force in Helmand said there were no other casualties to the troops beside the death, the first this year among the roughly 40,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. “A number of Taliban were killed in the course of the action, but we don’t know how many ... possibly a significant number,” he said. A purported Taliban spokesman, Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, said only three fighters were killed and eight wounded.
In another development, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of foreign construction workers and Afghan soldiers in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, wounding one civilian. The blast went off south of Qalat, the capital of Zabul province, killing the bomber, said police official Mohammmad Asif. None of the foreigners or Afghan soldiers were wounded, but an Afghan passer-by was hurt in the blast, he said. Asif said the foreigners and Afghan troops were in their vehicles near a construction site at the time of the blast. The foreigners were working on the construction of a building for Afghan security forces, he said. Asif could not say what nationality the foreigners were or the name of the company they worked for.
On Saturday, a mine blast in another southern province destroyed a police vehicle, wounding two Afghan border policemen, said Raziq Khan, a border police official. The blast occurred in Spin Boldak area of Kandahar province and Khan blamed Taliban militants for planting the mine on the road.
Afghan soldiers, meanwhile, discovered some 60 gas masks, four mine detecting machines and other military equipment in Paktika province, said Defence Ministry spokesman Gen Mohammad Zahir Azimi.