US air strike, attack kill eight Afghan Taliban

KABUL (Reuters) – An air strike by U.S.-led forces killed
three Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, while another
five were killed in a militant attack on a police station,
officials said on Tuesday.

The air strike on Monday targeted a meeting at a suspected
Taliban camp in the Lashkar Gah area of Helmand province, the
U.S. military said in a statement. There were no civilian
casualties or damage to property observed during the operation.

The three fighters killed had launched several attacks on
Afghan and U.S. forces and were also involved in financing
“terrorist activities,” the statement added.

Also on Monday, Taliban guerrillas attacked a police
station in the Mianishin district of neighboring Kandahar
province. They killed one police officer, but lost five of
their own men, a provincial official said.

The Taliban announced a spring offensive in March, although
there had been an unusual level of militant activity in the
winter months with the increasing use of suicide attacks.

The Taliban and its Islamist allies are active mostly in
southern and eastern Afghanistan. Dozens of Afghan soldiers
have been killed, along with 13 U.S. troops so far this year.

On Saturday, a bomb killed four Canadian soldiers in
Kandahar province.

The insurgency has run since a Taliban government was
ousted by U.S.-backed forces in late 2001 after it had refused
to hand over al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, following the
September 11 attacks on the United States.

Although the insurgency has intensified, the United States
plans to reduce its troop strength from 19,000 to 16,500 this
year, while a NATO-led peacekeeping mission plans to deploy
thousands more troops to fill the gap.