US-led coalition targets Haqqani network

KABUL (AFP) - Airstrikes and ground battles killed three dozen Taliban and two civilians while an insurgent suicide bombing on the border claimed two more lives in Afghanistan, authorities said Tuesday. The US military said it had called in airstrikes in remote mountains in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan overnight and killed more than a dozen militants in bunkers.
A local official said 22 men were killed, many of them foreign nationals.
The strikes in the eastern province of Khost were called in against senior commanders of the Haqqani network, a Taliban outfit that is linked to Al-Qaeda and accused of some of the most sophisticated attacks in Afghanistan.
Coalition force aircraft were called in and destroyed a pair of command bunkers, killing more than a dozen militants, a US statement said.
The statement described the network as one of the most lethal Taliban organisations and said it operated out of Pakistans Federally-Administered Tribal Areas just across the border.
The strikes were in a border district called Waza Khwa r and 22 Taliban were killed, said district governor Abdul Wali Zadran.
Zadran claimed the dead were all foreign nationals but there was no way to confirm this. An Afghan media report said some were Arabs.
Also on the border with Pakistan, a suicide attacker blew himself up at a checkpoint, killing a policeman and a 12-year-old child, a provincial government spokesman said.
The attacker struck near a room at the Torkham border post used for searching women travellers, Nangarhar province spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai told AFP.
Three policemen, a policewoman and six civilians were injured, he said.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
In the northern province of Baghlan, a clash erupted Monday after Taliban had demanded a tax from farmers, which the locals refused, police said.
The locals called the police and fighting lasted into the night, provincial police spokesman Jawaid Basharat said.
In the clashes 15 Taliban were killed and another 13 Taliban were wounded. Two locals who also took part and were fighting the Taliban with policemen were killed, he said.