44 rebels killed in airstrikes, blasts

KABUL airstrikes and mine blasts in various provinces, officials said on Tuesday.

Fourteen rebels were killed and eight others captured alive during an ongoing operation by Afghan forces in central Logar province, the 203rd Thunder Military Corps said in a statement.

Another 10 insurgents perished in a coalition airstrike in the Khoshi district of the same province, the statement said, adding the dead included a Taliban commander, Mirwais.

In the Padkhab Shana area on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Pul-i-Alam, four militants, planting roadside bombs, were killed in a separate airstrike.

Six insurgents were detained in the Ahmadkhel district of southeastern Paktia province. The Afghan troops arrested another suspected militant in the Khairkot district of the province.

Elsewhere in the province, three militants were killed when the bomb they were planting on a road went off prematurely in the Kotikhel area of Zurmat district.

Another eight insurgents were killed in similar blasts on the Gardez-Zurmat highway in Syed Karam and Ahmadkhel districts, the statement continued.

In Helmand, one policeman was killed and three others were wounded when the roadside bomb they were defusing exploded in Lashkargah, the provincial capital, the governor’s spokesman, Omar Zwak, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

But a security official, who did not want to be named, said the bomb had remotely been detonated as the policemen tried to neutralise it.

In Kandahar, a Taliban commander was among four fighters killed during a joint operation by Afghan forces in Khakrez district, the governor’s house. The slain rebel commander was identified as Mullah Syed Wali.

ma/mud

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