KHOST: At least 30 Taliban were killed in violence across Afghanistan on Wednesday, while four civilians died in rocket attacks on the same day. Afghan and coalition forces killed 26 Taliban militants on the country’s border with Pakistan on Wednesday, a provincial governor said. The militants were killed in an operation in south-eastern Paktika province that was launched in response to attacks in the Ziruk district, Governor Mohammad Akram Khapelwak said. “Twenty-six Taliban have been killed so far in the fire-fight. The operation is still ongoing,” he said. “It was a joint Afghan forces and coalition operation,” he said. Four civilians were killed in the same province on Wednesday by three rockets that landed on homes in the Barmal district, also on the border with Pakistan, the governor said. Another 18 civilians were wounded, he said. Two Taliban fighters were killed in a gun battle in the province of Zabul after they ambushed a US convoy, wounding two American soldiers. Taliban officials could not be immediately contacted. Regional military Corps Commander General Samiul Haq said that the target might have been army units in the area but the rockets landed on civilian houses. He put the death toll at two with nine wounded. An American soldier died in an ambush in the southern province of Helmand on Tuesday, said Major Quentin Innes, a spokesman for international forces in southern Afghanistan. The US military said that another foreign soldier had been killed in the eastern province of Kunar on Tuesday but did not give his identity.
Colonel Tom Collins, a coalition spokesman in Kabul, said that US, British and Canadian troops were launching Operation Mountain Thrust in the volatile and largely lawless south to combat the Taliban and extend the control of the government of President Hamid Karzai. “Operation Mountain Thrust is not about just killing and capturing extremists and militants threatening the security of the Afghan people,” he told a news conference. “It is very much about establishing the condition for the government of Afghanistan that can extend authority in the areas where it currently does not have a presence.”
