A Taliban ambush killed 16 policemen in Afghanistan on Thursday as the NATO-led force said a chopper that came down in the south, killing seven foreign soldiers, might have been struck by hostile fire.
Afghan officials announced meanwhile that at least a dozen Taliban fighters lost their lives in incidents overnight. Bombing raids in the southern province of Helmand believed to have killed and injured several more. A three-vehicle police convoy was on its way from the south to the capital, Kabul, when it was ambushed along the main highway, the interior ministry said. “Sixteen police were martyred and another six were injured today at 8:30am in an ambush by the enemies of peace in Afghanistan,” spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. There were also casualties on the Taliban side, Bashary said, without giving a number.
NATOÂ’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in Kabul meanwhile that a Chinook that came down in Helmand late Wednesday might have been hit by hostile fire. The Taliban movement said its men shot down the chopper.
“We are able to say now that there may have been enemy fire in bringing down the helicopter,” the ISAF media office in Kabul said. “It could be anything from small arms fire upwards,” it added.
The 37-nation force does not release the nationalities of its casualties but the Ministry of Defence announced in London that one of the seven dead was a British soldier. Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said late Wednesday that “our brothers in Helmand” had brought down the heavy transport helicopter. “The helicopter burst into flames in the sky and then crashed,” he said, citing the local rebel cell that claimed to have carried out the attack.
The defence ministry said meanwhile that Afghan and ISAF soldiers became involved in heavy fighting in Helmand early Thursday. “Tens of enemy elements have been killed and injured,” it said in a statement. “Various enemy locations were bombed by the air forces and the operation is still ongoing,” it added. Separately the district centre in western Farah province, which is on the Iranian border, came under “heavy attack by enemies of peace and sovereignty” overnight, the interior ministry said on Thursday. Police returned fire, killing 10 rebels and injuring 15, it said. In the southern province of Kandahar, two Taliban insurgents fell victim to one of their own bombs when the device exploded as they were planting it, Panjwayi district governor Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi said. In Khost province, the US-led coalition detained three suspected Taliban militants in a raid, officials said. |