Eleven Taliban were killed during heavy fighting between Taliban and security forces in Afghanistan's remote northwest area on Wednesday, local authorities said.Two Afghan soldiers also died in a Taliban suicide attack, the authorities added. About 300 Taliban attacked a government district centre in Badghis province late on Tuesday, sparking hours of fighting, police said.
"There were no casualties to police forces and civilians," provincial police chief Muhammad Ayoub Niazyar told reporters. "At least 11 Taliban have been killed and 20 wounded," he said.
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said he knew nothing about the fighting, and there was no way to confirm independently what had happened. The insurgent group, which was ousted from government during the 2001 US-led invasion, instead claimed a suicide bombing in the western city of Herat that killed two Afghan soldiers heading to work, the Defence Ministry said. Another three soldiers were wounded when the attacker rammed a bomb-filled vehicle into an Afghan army convoy, the ministry added.
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body at a wedding in the northern town of Baghlan, wounding five children and a police commander, local police said. Last year was the deadliest ever in the Taliban insurgency. An independent Afghan rights group said nearly 4,000 civilians had been killed in the violence last year, more than two-thirds in rebel attacks and about 1,100 by foreign forces.