Coalition troops kill 14 Taleban fighters: over 1,000 died in Afghanistan this year

US-led forces have killed 14 Taleban fighters in clashes during a major operation against rebels in volatile southern Afghanistan, the US military said.
Eight insurgents were killed in a raid on Thursday on a cave complex used as a "meeting place and sanctuary" for Taleban bomb-makers in Uruzgan province.
Six rebels were arrested while a cache containing AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and two machine guns was also recovered, a spokesman for the US military said in a statement late on Thursday. Coalition forces suffered no losses.
Six other Taleban fighters were killed in an attack in neighbouring Helmand province on Wednesday, the spokesman said.
The Taleban had no immediate comment on the attacks. The rebels, ousted from power in 2001, have stepped up attacks this year in their southern and eastern heartland, bordering Pakistan, where they enjoy considerable support from the local population.
On Friday, a convoy carrying Danish army commander-in-chief Hans Jesper Helso was hit by a roadside bomb near Feyzabad in north-eastern Afghanistan, the Danish central army command said.
One soldier was slightly injured and a light-armoured patrol vehicle was damaged. Helso was in Afghanistan on a routine inspection, an army spokesman said in Copenhagen.
In southern Zabul province on Friday, residents found two decapitated bodies. Local officials said they were civilians killed by the Taleban on suspicion of being "informers" for Afghan government forces.
More than 1,000 people, including more than 40 foreign soldiers, have died this year, the worst bloodshed in the war-ravaged country since the fall of the Taleban and ahead of Nato troops taking over the volatile south from the US forces.