Afghan army says 18 Taliban killed in clashes

Afghan government troops and police killed at least 18 Taliban insurgents Saturday in clashes in the northern city of Archi, local civilian and military officials said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed for his part said 20 soldiers had been killed and the insurgents controlled the town, a hotbed of violence in Kunduz province.

The fighting in Archi followed incidents Friday in the south and east in which a further 24 Taliban were reported killed, while in the western Herat province the insurgents were said to have murdered four civilians, three of them brothers.

District chief Shikh Saduddin told AFP the government forces were trying to oust the Taliban from Archi.

Colonel Abdul Wakil Ahsas, the commander of a battalion in the provincial capital of Kunduz, said two Taliban attacks had been repulsed, with 18 confirmed killed and ten wounded.

Another four Taliban were also thought to have been killed but their bodies had not been found, he said.

Three policemen were wounded, the colonel added.

Kunduz has become a new battleground in the war between the Taliban and government and Western forces.

It has become more interesting to the insurgents with the launching of a new supply route for the foreign trips from Tajikistan which passes through the province.

Kunduz was the scene of an air strike on September 4 by NATO on two coalition fuel trucks that had been captured by the Taliban, which killed 30 civilians as well as 69 militants according to Kabul.

Also Saturday, the interior ministry said 12 Taliban were killed in Helmand the day before, eight of them when they tried to ambush police and foreign troops.

In the district of Freshk a local Taliban commander, Fazal Rahim, was among three more killed, the defence ministry added.

In the neighbouring province of Nimroz a nine-hour battle sparked by a Taliban attack on a border police post in Kang district on the Iranian frontier ended early Saturday with eight militants killed, the provincial police chief said.

Abdul Jabar Pordili said police casualties were two killed and three wounded.

A similar attack in Dur Baba district in eastern Nangarhar province, near the Pakistan border, left four Taliban dead, the interior ministry said.

In Herat, police spokesman Abdul Rauf Ahmadi said four civilians had been found dead in Injil district with notes on their bodies accusing them of collaborating with government and foreign forces.

They included three brothers, and a man of 26 who had been hung from an electric pylon.