Afghan and NATO forces battled Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan’s volatile south with rockets, artillery and airstrikes killing 71 militants Sunday in one of the country’s bloodiest clashes in five years.
Five Afghan troops were also killed in the series of battles, which started late Saturday and spilled into Sunday morning after the Taliban attacked a police convoy in Panjwayi district of southern Kandahar province, said Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, the district government chief.
Militants ambushed another police patrol in western Afghanistan’s Farah province, sparking a gunbattle that left one officer and two attackers dead, a regional governor said.
Afghanistan’s southern provinces are bearing the brunt of the worst bout of violence since U.S.-led forces toppled the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001. Taliban holdouts and allied extremists have stepped up attacks in a bid to undermine the American-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
Separately, three U.S. soldiers were killed and three others wounded during a fight with Taliban militants in Pech district in eastern Kunar province on Saturday, said Col. Tom Collins, the U.S. military spokesman.
Their combat patrol struck a homemade bomb before they engaged “a group of Taliban extremists,” a U.S. military statement said.
Also Saturday, a U.S. soldier was killed and three others wounded in a four-hour clash with more than 100 insurgents in southern Uruzgan province, officials said. One Afghan soldier also died.
In Panjwayi, NATO troops used artillery and aircraft to inflict “heavy casualties against Taliban fighters,” an alliance statement said.
“It was a sizable engagement,” said Toby Jackman, a NATO force spokesman. He called the clash part of an ongoing operation “to extend security” along the 420 kilometer (260 mile) Kabul-Kandahar highway.
The bodies of 71 slain militants were found in three locations, scattered through orchards alongside their weapons, Sarhadi said.
“The police are still searching for more dead bodies of Taliban,” he said.
Four police and one Afghan soldier were also killed in the clashes, officials said. Three police and five soldiers were wounded and three police are missing.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, claimed insurgents killed “scores” of police and damaged 10 of their vehicles before a NATO airstrike left just 12 militants dead and eight wounded.
Ahmadi often contacts journalists to claim attacks for the Taliban, but his exact ties to the militia’s leadership are unclear.
In the western Farah province, attackers ambushed a highway police patrol, killing one officer before two attackers were shot dead, said Ghulam Dastagir Azad, the governor of neighboring Nimroz province.
The ambush in Bakwa district of the western Farah province also resulted in six officers and three attackers being wounded, he said.
Azad referred to the attackers as “enemies” — a term usually used by Afghan officials to refer to the Taliban — but was unable to provide their motive.
Farah has been relatively untouched by the spiraling violence in bordering southern provinces like Helmand and Nimroz.
But officials have said intense U.S. and NATO-led military operations in the south during recent months have pushed some militants further north into areas like Farah, where they have also started launching low-scale ambushes and bombings.
