38 killed in east Afghan fighting: Governor

Governor of Nuristan says Taliban crossed over from Pakistan and attacked police posts in Kamdesh district.

ASADABAD: At least 33 police and five civilians were killed in fighting after Taliban crossed over from Pakistan and attacked a remote region in eastern Afghanistan, an official told AFP.

Nuristan provincial governor Jamaluddin Badr said about 40 rebels also died in the clashes that follow weeks of tit-for-tat allegations of cross-border attacks that have fanned diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

Dozens of rebels crossing the border from Pakistan triggered the fight, Badr said, attacking police posts in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan.

"The report we have now from the area is that 33 border police and five civilians, two of them women, have been killed," he said.

He said most of the dead rebels were Pakistan Taliban.

"The bodies of some of them remain in the area and a clean-up operation is under way right now," he said.