Afghan and Nato troops kill 36 Taliban rebels in ‘clean-up’

AFGHAN and Nato troops, backed by helicopter gunships, killed 36 Taliban rebels yesterday in a huge “clean-up” operation to drive out militants entrenched in villages near Kandahar.

Two Afghan troops also died in the offensive in southern Arghandab district, which was launched after a burst of insurgent activity, including a mass rebel jailbreak in Kandahar, that embarrassed US-allied President Hamid Karzai.

The operation began as Britain announced the deaths elsewhere of four soldiers, one of them reportedly the country’s first female casualty in Afghanistan, while two more Nato soldiers were killed in another incident.

A Taliban spokesman said the hard-line movement’s fighters — hundreds of whom swarmed into the district on Monday evening — wanted to capture it in order to launch attacks on Kandahar itself.

The southern city, Afghanistan’s second biggest, was where the Taliban first rose to power in the 1990s before taking control of the rest of the country.

General Carlos Branco, a spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, said more than 1,000 Afghan and Canadian Nato troops were taking part in the operation.

“We’re progressing steadily and carefully in order not only to avoid civilian casualties but because of the potential threat from possible IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices),” Branco said.

An Afghan defence ministry statement said a Taliban group was “targeted by Nato air force” in Ta-been village in Arghandab, killing 33 “local and foreign terrorists”, while three more rebels were shot dead elsewhere in the district.

Two soldiers were also killed in the operation, the ministry said.

Branco confirmed that military helicopters had “engaged” the rebels but said no fixed-wing aircraft had dropped bombs.

A civilian Nato spokesman, Mark Laity, said there had been only “minor” clashes with the militants but added “we’ve inflicted casualties on the insurgents during these exchanges”.

A self-styled Taliban commander called Mullah Sayed Ahmad, said there had been “very heavy fighting going on and the Nato helicopters also fired machine guns into our positions”.