Afghan and international troops killed several Taliban fighters in a hunt for a top militant leader on Monday as officials reported that six more insurgents and five policeman died in separate fighting, while a Taliban spokesman said that thousands of the group’s fighters were currently in the southern province of Helmand. The United States-led coalition said in a statement that a battle had erupted in when militants fired rocket-propelled grenade at Afghan and coalition troops looking for an insurgent with ties to Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar. It said that an assessment of damages from the early morning battle near the town of Gereshk had yet to determine the number of “terrorists” killed. It did not say whether the targeted man was among the dead. While the militant’s name is not known, he has also been linked to Mohammad Osmani, who was killed in Helmand in December and remains the highest-ranked Taliban leader killed by the coalition since the fall of the hardline regime in 2001.
The statement added that the joint Afghan and coalition assault had been based on “substantial information”. An Afghan soldier was wounded when a vehicle overturned.
Separately, the governor of Khogyani district in the eastern province of Nangarhar, Haji Zalmai Khan, said that a roadside bomb struck a US convoy on Monday, wounding an American soldier. Suspects were arrested soon afterwards, he added.
There were also clashes in the southern provinces of Uruzgan and Zabul, Afghan officials said. Six Taliban were killed and a dozen arrested late on Sunday after a battle near Tirin Kot, the Uruzgan capital, provincial spokesman Abdul Qayoom Qayomi told AFP, adding that three policemen had been killed and four wounded. In adjoining Zabul, Taliban attacked a police convoy and killed two of the policemen. One wounded Taliban was arrested and two more suspects were also apprehended nearby, highway police commander Ghulam Jailani Khan told AFP. Meanwhile, a purported Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed on Monday that there were “thousands of Taliban” in Helmand. Foreign military officials downplayed the claims.