By DPA
Kabul : Clashes between Taliban and Afghan forces backed by international troops left at least 31 rebels dead, while two Afghan soldiers were also killed and ten wounded, officials said Saturday.
Afghan police killed at least six suspected Taliban militants while two policemen were wounded in a gunfight after police surrounded a Taliban hideout in southern Afghanistan.
According to Kandahar provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib, the attack took place in the Arghandab district of Kandahar on Friday when the police, acting on an intelligence report, surrounded a compound where Taliban militants had gathered for a meeting.
“The police asked the militants to surrender but they refused and opened fire on our forces,” Saqib told DPA.
Several of the militants hiding in the compound escaped, he said.
Meanwhile in the neighbouring Uruzgan province, Afghan forces supported by US-led coalition forces killed 15 suspected Taliban when their combined forces’ convoy was ambushed by rebels in the Charchino district of the province, the Afghan defence ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The battle, which included aerial bombing by coalition forces, caused no casualties among the Afghan and international forces.
Taliban-led violence has risen sharply in the last three weeks, taking the death toll for this year to over 3,200, mainly insurgents, but also including hundreds of Afghan troops as well as international soldiers.
Also on Friday, ten militants were killed in a fight with Afghan and NATO forces in the Gerishk district of southern Helmand province while on Thursday some 20 suspected rebels were killed in the same province, officials said.
The defence ministry said in a statement Saturday that their forces backed NATO troops in arresting 16 suspected Taliban fighters in an operation in the Gerishk and Sangin districts of Helmand province on Friday.
The statement also said that two Afghan soldiers were killed and eight wounded in different operations over the last 48 hours but did not provide details.