More than 600 suspected Taliban fighters have been killed over the past month, the bloodiest period in southern Afghanistan since their regime was overthrown five years ago, United States officials said on Tuesday.
The Taliban fighters were the targets of Operation Mountain Thrust, an American-led offensive designed to flush out as many Taliban militants as possible before Nato takes over responsibility for stabilising the country’s hostile southern provinces at the end of this month.
The number of Taliban dead was given by Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesperson for the US-led multinational coalition. It is also estimated that more than 1 700 people have been killed since the start of the year. They include civilians, aid workers, Afghan forces and more than 70 foreign troops.
The threat to civilians was demonstrated again on Tuesday when one Afghan was killed and four others wounded as their taxi was hit by a roadside bomb north of Kabul, Nato forces said. Elsewhere, a US soldier and seven militant insurgents were killed in two separate clashes, one in the south-eastern province of Paktika and the other in eastern Kunar, it was reported on Tuesday.
Two US soldiers were seriously wounded in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Khost province. They were on their way to a road reconstruction project on Sunday between Khost and Gardez when they were attacked, military officials said. Their wounds were serious but not life-threatening.
President Hamid Karzai, meanwhile, condemned the fatal shooting of an Afghan doctor and a driver for the international Christian relief and development organisation World Vision on Sunday. The pair were killed after they had delivered medicines to Charsada in Ghor province.
Karzai said in a statement that the two were killed ”at the instructions of foreigners”, taken to be a reference to Arab fighters many of whom are suspected of being based across the border in Pakistan.
British and Nato officials recently put the number of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan at between 1 000 and 2 000, with others able freely to cross the Afghan-Pakistani border.
UK commanders — in charge of more than 3 000 British troops deployed in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan — have expressed surprise at what they have called the ”virulence” of Taliban fighters.
Publicly, they have made a virtue out of the Taliban’s aggression by saying they have confronted and killed more extremists, and more quickly, than they expected. However, this has made British forward bases vulnerable — notably in the Sangin valley in Helmand province where six British soldiers have been killed — and has left troops over-extended.
Des Browne, the British defence secretary, told MPs on Monday he had agreed to give British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq better protection by providing them with 300 new armoured vehicles. – Guardian Unlimited Â