AGENCIES

KABUL AFGHAN security forces and NATO-led coalition troops have killed 28 Taliban insurgents and detained 31 others during 10 cleanup operations within the past 24 hours, the country’s Interior Ministry said on Tuesday morning.

“The Afghan National Police (ANP), army and coalition forces carried out 10 cleanup operations in Kunar, Baghlan, Samangan, Kunduz, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Ghazni, Khost and Helmand provinces, killing 28 armed Taliban insurgents and detaining 31 other suspects throughout the past 24 hours,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ANP also seized weapons and ammunition including 10 AK-47 guns with 21 magazines, three rocket launchers, two PKM machine guns, five different types of mines.

The statement did not say if there were any casualties on the side of the security forces.

In another joint operation, the Afghan army and police killed five Taliban insurgents, including two Pakistani militants, in the Gullul area of Ab Band district in eastern Ghazni province earlier Tuesday, an army spokesman in the province, Hahkimullah Stanikzai, said.

He said one injured militant was captured during the on-going operation.

The Afghan forces and some 130,000 NATO-led coalition troops have intensified cleanup operations against Taliban and other militants across the country recently.

More than 270 insurgents have been killed, 16 wounded and over 120 others detained by the joint forces throughout the country so far this month, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry.

However, the insurgents in retaliation responded by carrying out suicide attacks and roadside bombings especially in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

Three policemen and two children were killed and 18 police officers and six civilians were injured when Taliban launched a coordinated suicide and gunfight attack against a police installation in Kandahar city, the provincial capital of southern Kandahar province, Monday afternoon.