U.S.-led forces kill Taliban commander in Afghanistan

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16 february 2009

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S.-led troops have killed a wanted Taliban commander in an air strike in Afghanistan's southwestern province of Badghis, U.S. and Afghan officials said Monday.

Mullah Dastagir along with eight other militants were killed in a raid on a village near Turkmenistan's border on Sunday night, they said.

Dastagir was behind a series of attacks in Badghis, including an ambush in which 13 Afghan soldiers were killed last November, they added.

Before that ambush, Dastagir had been jailed but was released by order of President Hamid Karzai, a defense ministry official said.

The U.S. military confirmed the air strike and the casualties including Dastagir's killing.

The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

Separately, in an operation in southern Helmand province, the Afghan army killed seven Taliban insurgents, the defense ministry said.

Ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, in reprisal for sheltering al Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks on America, the Taliban have managed to extend the scope and extent of their insurgency in recent years.

Violence has surged despite an increase in the number of foreign troops to more than 70,000 now, and amid a planned dispatch of some 20,000 more U.S. soldiers this year.

Separately, a roadside bomb killed three employees of a road construction company Monday in the eastern province of Kunar, the interior ministry said, adding three more were wounded in the blast.