By DPA
Kabul : Four Taliban militants and an Afghan police officer were killed in militants’ attack in southern Afghanistan, and three militants were killed in a later air strike in the same region, officials said Wednesday.
The first attack occurred Tuesday in Marja district of the volatile southern province of Helmand when the police officers were patrolling the area, said Mohammad Hussain Andewal, the provincial police chief.
“The fighting that happened yesterday (Tuesday) evening left four Taliban militants dead and one police officer was also killed and another two were wounded,” Andewal said.
He said that the bodies of the militants along with their weapons were left on the battlefield.
In neighbouring Zabul province, three militants were killed and two others wounded when their motorbikes were spotted and attacked by a NATO-led aircraft Wednesday, Gulob Shah Alikhail, a provincial official said.
He said that a woman and a child, who were passing from the area at the time of the attack, were also wounded and were taken to hospital by local residents of the area.
The latest attack in the province came a day after 17 Afghan workers and seven militants were killed when Taliban insurgents attacked a road construction company convoy on the restive Kabul-Kandahar highway.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been on the rise after a lull during the winter, following the bloodiest year in 2007 that left more than 8,000 people dead in violent clashes.