Afghan and international authorities said on Saturday that more than a dozen insurgents had been killed in new clashes in Taliban and Al Qaeda hotspots, as a district police chief and his guard died in a bombing.Authorities were, meanwhile, following up on a major attack on a remote outpost in the east of the country on Friday that killed three US, two Latvian and three Afghan troops in one of the deadliest incidents for the security forces in months. The US military announced that its forces working with Afghan troops had killed five militants on Friday in the southern province of Helmand, a stronghold of the Taliban. The troops had come under attack while on a routine security patrol and "returned fire with small-arms and heavy weapons, killing five militants," it said in a statement.
Six to seven more militants were killed overnight in the adjoining province of Kandahar, provincial police intelligence chief Abdullah Khan said. They had been travelling in a pick-up vehicle and were targeted by an air strike, he said.
Separately, the Defence Ministry said that its men had killed one 'terrorist' on Friday in the eastern province of Paktika. None of the incidents or tolls could be independently confirmed.
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry reported that the police chief of Farsi district in the western province of Herat was killed, along with a bodyguard, early on Saturday when a bomb blew up their vehicle. It blamed the attack, in which six policemen were also wounded, on insurgents.