Afghan security forces backed by international troops killed 16 militants while a suicide attacker killed four Afghan employees of a US-owned private security firm, officials said on Sunday.
The Afghan defence ministry said 10 militants were killed in fighting in the Barmal district of eastern Paktika province bordering Pakistan early Sunday when Afghan security forces and Nato-led troops raided a rebel hideout. "Ten enemy fighters were killed and 15 others were injured in an operation in Barmal district this morning," the ministry said in a statement. One militant was captured and some weapons were seized, it added.
Governor for Paktika, Mohammad Akram Ikhpolwak, earlier said the dead included an al Qaeda-linked Arab fighter. The troops also captured a Pakistani national he said, but gave no details. The US-led military in a statement said coalition forces detained one extremist and discovered material for making explosive devices in a compound in Paktika province early Sunday. "The compound consisted of multiple safe houses that use natural terrain to facilitate the movement of fighters from Pakistan," the statement added. "Credible intelligence led coalition forces to the compound," it said, adding that no shots were fired and no one was injured.
In a further incident, Afghan and US-led troops killed six Taliban fighters in Sangin district in southern Helmand province on Saturday. The US military said some 1,000 international and Afghan troops took control of Sangin about two weeks ago.
The fighting in Sangin began when rebels using mortars and machine guns attacked the combined force, the US military said in a statement. "Six Taliban fighters were killed, and there were no Afghan civilian injuries reported," it said.
In the suicide attack the bomber, carrying explosives on a motorbike, targeted a US Protection and Investigations (USPI) vehicle just a few hundred metres (yards) from Kandahar airfield, a base for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.
"There was a suicide attack against a vehicle of the USPI. Three guards and a driver were killed and another guard was injured," a police officer at a nearby check-post told AFP.
The bombing in the volatile southern city of Kandahar was the second suicide attack in the country in as many days after eight people, mostly police, were killed in a blast in the eastern city of Khost on Saturday.
Separately, an explosion caused by a landmine in a garbage dump rocked the capital, Kabul, but caused no casualties, police and witnesses said.
The Taliban, ousted from power by a US-led military offensive at the end of 2001, are waging a guerrilla-like insurgency, mainly in southern and eastern Afghanistan, which has claimed thousands of lives, including civilians.
Militants from the ousted Taliban regime have threatened a wave of suicide bombings this year as the rebels step up their campaign against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
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