Friday, May 4, 2012

11 Taliban militants killed in southern Afghanistan

Cropped version of a larger map to show detail...
Cropped version of a larger map to show detail around Lashkar Gah (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, May 4 (Xinhua) -- A total of 11 Taliban militants were killed over night when the NATO-led forces launched an air attack in Gereshk district of southern Helmand province, a police source said on Friday.

"Eleven Taliban rebels were killed after they were spotted with weapons in Hous-e-Khoshk area of Gereshk district Thursday night," a police official and head of the coordination center of joint forces in the province, Muhammad Ismail Hotak, told Xinhua.

He said the armed militants intended to launch attacks on security check posts in the area and the police forces called in an air support killing the entire attackers on the spot.

The Taliban militants, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, announced on Wednesday that they will launched a spring rebel offensive dubbed "Al-Farooq" from May 3 and the targets are foreign and Afghan troops as well as legislators and government functionaries.

Meantime, Hotak also confirmed that Taliban militants launched armed attacks in Naw Zad, Musa Qala and Sangin districts Thursday night but Afghan police and army soldiers repelled the attacks and causing no casualties on side of security forces.

However, a Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told local media that the insurgent fighters launched massive coordinated attacks across the Helmand province killing several Afghan and foreign troops.

Notorious for growing poppy and militancy the Helmand province has been branded as Taliban hotbed in southern part of the insurgency-hit country.

Separately, nine Taliban insurgents were killed in eastern Afghan provinces when Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) launched cleanup operations in the region within 24 hours ended on May 3, the ISAF's Regional Command East said in a statement on Friday morning.

Operations in Regional Command East are still ongoing, the statement added.
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