NATO claims ‘dozens’ of Taliban killed in recent strikes

KABUL / LONDON: Nato said on Saturday it had killed dozens of insurgents and detained more than 100 in a series of strikes on Taliban militants across Afghanistan in recent weeks.

The raids between July 9 and 16 included about 40 operations, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said in a statement.

According to Isaf, the operations targeted insurgent leaders and networks, some of them responsible for recent attacks against coalition and Afghan targets, it said.

Meanwhile, two members of the Britain’s armed forces were killed in separate explosions in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London said on Saturday.

According to the Isaf statement about the death and capture of militants, the insurgents were “systematically tracked and targeted in precision” attacks to ensure civilians were not harmed, the statement said.

“In over 75 per cent of the operations conducted this week, insurgents were captured without a single shot fired. This fact should be placed in stark contrast to the over 46 civilians killed by the insurgents during the same period,” the statement said.

Isaf also said drugs, including 1.9 tons of heroin with a street value of 39 million dollars, weapons and bomb-making materials were also seized during the raids. Isaf troops, backed by their Afghan counterparts, have increased activities against insurgents in recent months trying to push back the rebels from their sanctuaries, mostly in the south of the country.

There are almost 150,000 Nato and US troops in the country, including a “surge” of 30,000 extra troops as part of counter-insurgency plans.

Military officials say the surge has led to more battlefield engagements, and thus more military casualties, with the toll of foreign troops so far this year at 375, compared to 520 for all of 2009.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said last month he wants the country’s combat troops to withdraw from Afghanistan within five years, without fixing a precise timetable. Earlier this week, a renegade Afghan soldier killed three British troops on an army base in Helmand.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2010.