A Taliban attack on a police post in western Afghanistan sparked a battle that left at least 20 militants and four police dead, a provincial governor said on Thursday.Dozens of fighters attacked a police position in Badghis province Wednesday, setting off a three-hour gunfight, governor Mohammad Ashraf Nasiri told AFP. “Twenty militants were killed and nine militants were wounded in the fighting,” he said. Four police were also killed.
Western Afghanistan is relatively peaceful compared to the insurgency-hit south and southeast of the country, where militant attacks are an almost daily routine. But Bala Murghab district, the scene of the latest attack, has seen a spike in violence in the past months. Seven Afghan soldiers and 20 militants were killed in a battle there last month that was sparked when Taliban militants ambushed an Afghan and NATO army convoy.
In another incident related to the insurgency, a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up on Thursday in the southern province of Ghazni, provincial police chief Alishah Ahmadzai said. His target was an Afghan army truck, and a soldier was severely wounded.
Elsewhere Afghan soldiers carried out an operation in Wardak province in which three “enemies” were killed and nine wounded and arrested, police said. Wardak, which adjoins Kabul province, is where Taliban-linked militants captured a German engineer two months ago. The operation did not appear to be related to the kidnapping.
A Bangladeshi national was seized in neighbouring Logar province on Saturday by unknown men whom police say were criminally motivated and not linked to the Taliban. Three suspects have been arrested. A road accident in southern Afghanistan killed two British soldiers, the Defense Ministry. The ministry said the troops from 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment died when their Pinzgauer armored vehicle went off the road during a resupply mission near Gereshk in Helmand province. No enemy forces were involved. The ministry did not identify the soldiers, but said their next of kin had been informed.
Britain has some 7,000 troops in Afghanistan, where they are engaged in fierce, and increasingly bloody, fighting against the resurgent Taliban in Helmand. Eighty-one British personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since operations began there in November 2001.
UN renews NATO troop mandate: The UN Security Council authorized NATO-led troops to stay in Afghanistan for another year on Wednesday and gave the Japanese government support in its domestic dispute over refueling US and other ships in the Indian Ocean. The vote was 14-0 with Russia abstaining in the resolution that emphasized “the increased violent and terrorist activities by the Taliban, Al Qaeda, illegally armed groups and those involved in the narcotics trade.”
The International Security Assistance Force has close to 40,000 soldiers in Afghan to combat the countryÂ’s former Taliban rulers, toppled by US and Afghan forces in 2001.