By KUNA,
Kabul : Fierce fighting broke out in southern Afghanistan when scores of Taliban insurgents attacked an Afghan Army convoy on the main highway south of the capital on Thursday.
Afghan officials said that the Taliban were beaten back by soldiers and police officers and that 35 insurgents were killed, including several foreign fighters, and five captured.
The battle came as NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, warned of critical danger to Afghanistan, with foreign fighters and terrorists from different countries trying to destabilize the country.
He called for greater international attention to the problem.
“Those people – and we see too many of them in recent weeks and months – who are coming into Afghanistan to create mischief and havoc, those people who want to destabilize Afghanistan, and those people are killing NATO forces as well, are the same who are after the destabilizing of Pakistan and the destabilizing of other parts of the world,” he said.
He said the current situation was unacceptable and a regional political approach was needed to tackle the threat.
“I cannot imagine anyone who would consider it acceptable that many terrorists from all over the world gather in a certain area and create mischief and havoc there,” he said.
NATO has some 53,000 soldiers in the International Security Assistance Force operating in Afghanistan, Scheffer said, who “are also the victims of the surge and the uptick in violent incidents we have seen recently.”