Eurasia Press & News
KABUL (AFP) – Three Afghan civilians were killed in crossfire between Taliban and soldiers in Afghanistan that also left several rebels dead, while two police died trying to defuse a large bomb Sunday, officials said.
The civilians died in an ambush on Afghan soldiers on Saturday in Paktya province, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement, adding it was investigating what had happened.
Civilian casualties caused by international soldiers in Afghanistan are deeply sensitive, causing anger inside and outside the country.
Around seven Taliban fighters were killed and three arrested after the battle, the US military told AFP separately.
In another incident linked to the Taliban’s insurgency, two police were killed Sunday trying to defuse a large bomb in the centre of the troubled city of Kandahar, police said.
Two more security officials were wounded and an Afghan television journalist was also badly hurt, deputy police chief Abdul Hakim Angar told AFP at the site of the blast.
The bomb, attached to a mobile phone, was of the sort used by Taliban insurgents in their attacks and was discovered under a drain on a road leading to the main NATO-led base on the outskirts of the city.
The new violence came a day after one of the deadliest attacks of the Taliban’s insurgency left 30 people dead in the capital.
The Taliban launched their insurgency after regrouping following their ouster from government in late 2001 in a US-led invasion launched because they were sheltering Al-Qaeda.
