Fresh insurgent attacks across Afghanistan have claimed nearly 20 more lives, officials said on Tuesday.
About 300 people have already died in recent days in some of the heaviest fighting since the radical Islamic Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001.
Three police officers and 12 Taliban fighters were killed early on Tuesday when a convoy carrying a deputy provincial governor and a police chief came under attack in the south. Three health workers and their driver died in a roadside bombing near the capital, Kabul, on Monday.
More than 20 insurgency-linked attacks have been reported in at least 12 provinces over the past two days. Many were outside the south and south-east, the traditional hot spots for Taliban-linked violence.
Meanwhile, villagers and human rights groups insisted that the number of civilians who had died in an hours-long air and ground assault carried out by the United States-led military coalition in the southern province of Kandahar early on Monday was higher than the 16 deaths reported by Afghan officials.
A teacher from the area said he had seen 40 bodies and helped to bury 28. A human rights official said the toll confirmed to him by officials was 20 but he believed it could rise as more information became available.
The three police officers and 12 Taliban were killed in a gun battle that erupted early on Tuesday after rebels ambushed a convoy of a provincial deputy governor and police chief in neighbouring Helmand province, a provincial official said.
Taliban fighters struck in Baghran district not far from an area where there have been major clashes between security forces and Taliban rebels in recent days, provincial spokesperson Muhaidin Khan said.
Helmand, where thousands of British troops are based, has seen several bloody clashes in the past days — part of a dramatic upsurge in violence across the country that is linked to an insurgency launched by the Taliban movement after it was removed from the government in 2001.
On Monday a doctor, two nurses and their driver were killed when a remote-controlled bomb exploded under their vehicle 60km from Kabul, officials said.
The team worked for the Afghan Health Development Service, a non-government health group that lost five other members of staff in an attack in Kandahar in October 2005.
Other violence
Several other incidents were reported on Tuesday.
Suspected Taliban torched a school in the northern province of Badghis at the weekend and there were two remote-controlled bomb attacks involving Nato-led forces, one in north-eastern Kunduz province and the other in neighbouring Badakshan province. The bomb attacks damaged military vehicles but caused no deaths.
”Enemies of Afghanistan” attacked a police checkpost in south-eastern Khost province overnight but were beaten back after 20 minutes of fighting, the interior ministry said.
Several roadside bombs and landmines were defused or exploded without causing casualties on Monday in the north, in Khost and in the neighbouring province of Paktia, Stanizai said.
And police in Khost and Kandahar provinces on Monday detected and defused several rockets that were primed to be fired, he said.
There has been a major surge in Taliban-linked fighting in the past week. Battles between security forces and militants in the south have killed about 250 rebels and about 50 Afghan police officers, soldiers and civilians. Five foreign nationals have also been killed, four of them soldiers.
Fighting traditionally increases in Afghanistan after the harsh winter ends, but this spring’s violence has been particularly heavy. Some analysts say this indicates that the Taliban movement is now better organised and able to confront police and troops on the battlefield.
There are more than 30 000 foreign troops in Afghanistan helping to fight the Taliban, which was toppled in 2001 but is seeking to regain power.
President to summon US commander
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai will summon the top commander of US forces in Afghanistan for an explanation of the civilian deaths during the coalition air and ground attack in the south, his office said on Tuesday.
The president has also ordered Afghan authorities to investigate the incident, a palace statement said.
Karzai, who is visiting the United Arab Emirates, was saddened by the incident but also condemned ”the cowardly act of terrorists hiding in people’s homes”, the statement said.
He will summon the commander of the coalition forces, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, to explain how the casualties occurred, it said.
The statement noted that Karzai has ”in the past also asked troops to be careful to avoid civilian casualties during combat operations”.
The president has spoken out against the way in which US troops sometimes operate in Afghanistan as part of the US-led ”war on terror”.
Karzai has also asked the Kandahar government to give assistance to those wounded in the strike and the relatives of the dead, the statement said. — AFP
