NATO chief claims Afghan success as bombers strike

A TOP NATO general said yesterday that an offensive aimed at driving Taliban militants from their safe havens in southern Afghanistan has been “successfully completed”, even as suicide bombers struck military convoys, wounding six soldiers.

Lieutenant General David Richards, head of the 20,000 NATO-led force in Afghanistan, said the insurgents have been forced out of the volatile former Taliban heartland and reconstruction and development efforts there would soon begin.

Alliance officials have said more than 500 militants were killed during the two-week operation, centred mainly in Panjwai, Pashmul and Zhari districts of southern Kandahar province.

Meanwhile, two foreign military convoys came under attack from suicide bombers, a method frequently used by insurgents in Iraq.

A 17-year-old youth carrying explosives jumped in front of a US military convoy east of Kabul, killing a bystander and wounding three American soldiers, Afghan police said.

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber ploughed his explosive-laden vehicle into a Canadian military convoy in southern Afghanistan, killing one civilian and wounding three soldiers, the military said.

General Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan National Army’s chief of operations, acknowledged that the Taliban “were not all destroyed” and that some have simply slipped away into other areas.

“They may reorganise but our troops will follow,” Gen Karimi said.

But Lt Gen Richards ruled out immediately pursuing the Taliban holdouts.

“We will not dance to the Taliban’s tune,” he said. “They want to deflect us and take us away. We won’t let them do that.”

The end of one operation coincided with a start of a new US and Afghan offensive in the east of the country.

Dubbed Operation Mountain Fury, the new offensive involves 7,000 US and Afghan soldiers in the central and eastern provinces of Paktika, Khost, Ghazni, Paktya and Logar, the military said.

Separately, the mutilated body of an Afghan engineer was found yesterday in Ghazni province, where he had been kidnapped earlier in the week by suspected Taliban militants, said Ali Ahmad Fakuri, the provincial governor’s spokesman.

The victim had worked for a local aid agency involved in rural development, he said.