More than 30 Taliban fighters were killed in fighting in Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said Saturday, as authorities investigated claims of a similar number of civilian dead in separate strikes. The battle erupted in the south-western province of Farah on Friday, when another 30 Taliban were killed in heavy fighting announced Friday in southern Uruzgan.
The fighting was initiated by militants who ambushed Afghan police and soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, the US-led coalition said. The security forces retaliated and "killed over 30 insurgent fighters with accurate small arms fire and precision air strikes."
The coalition, which is helping Afghan security forces beat back the five-year-old insurgency, said it had no reports that civilians were affected by the fighting. But the Afghan interior ministry said it was looking into claims that there were civilian casualties a sensitive issue for the international forces with around 300 said to have been killed by troops this year.
The ministry was also looking into allegations of heavy civilian casualties in bombing raids on Thursday and Friday in the mountainous province of Kunar on the border with Pakistan.
A resident told AFP that nine people were killed when their house was bombed and 27 more when a funeral to bury the dead was struck. "It is not clear yet what happened," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. "We will send people there to see what has happened. We do not have any information from the ground."
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