Senior Taliban commander killed in Afghan airstrike (Roundup)

Aug 30, 2007, 15:48 GMT

Kabul - A senior Taliban commander was killed in an airstrike by international forces in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan Defence Ministry said Thursday.

Afghan troops en route from Sangin district of volatile Helmand province to the Sarwan Qalah area were ambushed by a group of militants on Thursday morning, the ministry said in a statement.

Army forces fought back and called in close air support, which killed several insurgents.

'Mullah Brodar, one of the famous Taliban commanders, was among the dead,' the statement said, citing army forces on the ground.

Mullah Brodar was a prominent military commanders in the radical Taliban regime that was ousted by a US-led campaign in late 2001. He then joined the insurgency against international forces in the provinces of Uruzgan and Helmand, according to Waheed Muzhda, a political analyst who had worked as a foreign ministry official in the Taliban government.

Brodar had very close ties with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, Muzhda said, adding, 'If the news is true, it is another blow to the Taliban movement.'

In May this year, another top Taliban military commander, Mullah Dadullah, was killed in Helmand province, while in December 2006 Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Osmani was killed in an air attack in the same province, near the Pakistani border.

Also on Thursday morning in Helmand province, Afghan and US-led coalition forces battled a group of Taliban militants in Musa Qalah district, the statement said, adding that the Afghan army hit an insurgent vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade, killing everyone inside.

No Afghan or coalition forces were hurt in either clash, it added.

In a separate incident, a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and his Afghan interpreter were killed Thursday while on a routine patrol in a southern region, the military said.

The soldier's identity was withheld pending the notification of his next of kin, the ISAF said without elaborating on the location or the type of attack.

The majority of forces in southern Afghanistan are US, British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers. Roadside bombs have become a common tactic used by Taliban militants.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition said that their forces killed 11 suspected Taliban after the rebels attacked a coalition base in southern Uruzgan province on Thursday, the US military said in a statement.

Insurgents attacked the coalition base from multiple directions with 72mm rockets, small-arms and heavy machine gun fire and slightly wounded two coalition soldiers, the statement said.

'Coalition close air support conducted precision airstrikes successfully destroying the enemy fighters,' the statement said, adding that the attack was the fourth on the base in a month.

Since spring, fighting has killed more than 4,000 mostly Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan but also left hundreds of Afghan and international troops dead.