KABUL: Nato warplanes pounded insurgent strongholds near the Afghan capital, killing two dozen rebels, the alliance said Thursday, as a foreign soldier lost his life in violence elsewhere in the country.
The soldier, whose nationality was not revealed, died in a Taliban-style improvised bomb attack on Wednesday, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
The death brings to 437 the number of international troops who have died in the Afghan war so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent website icasualties.org.
Many of those deaths have been caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which are the main weapon in the Taliban’s arsenal, along with suicide bomb attacks and targeted assassinations.
ISAF said two dozen rebels were killed, also on Wednesday, in air raids on their hideouts in the province of Logar, just south of Kabul, which is marked by Taliban violence.
The raids were part of an operation launched in the restive province to capture a Taliban commander, Qari Muir, the multinational force said in a statement.
“During the operation, 12 Taliban insurgents, including Muir, were killed,” it said.
The rebel commander “formerly held several Taliban positions including deputy shadow governor, military commander and intelligence chief for Logar province,” it added.
Elsewhere in Logar, the alliance’s intelligence pinpointed a gathering of Taliban insurgents preparing for an attack, the statement said. The gathering was targeted from the air and nine rebels were killed, it added.
Three other militants were killed in another airstrike, the force said. The toll could not independently verified.
There are 141,000 international troops in Afghanistan fighting under the command of US General David Petraeus to quell the insurgency, concentrated in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. —AFP
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