KABUL, Jan 12, (Agencies): Missiles fired from drone aircraft have killed 16 militants in southern Afghanistan, the NATO-led force said Tuesday, in a rare attack in Afghanistan using the controversial unmanned planes.
A drone was launched after troops observed large numbers of insurgents preparing a strike in the southern province of Helmand’s Naw Zad district on Monday, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
“An unmanned aerial vehicle launched one Hellfire missile killing 13 insurgents,” the force said.
Three other insurgents who “took up previously used firing positions” were also killed in a separate drone strike Monday in the Nad Ali district of Helmand, the heartland of the Taleban-led insurgency, the statement added.
Coalition forces rarely use drones in their operations against the Taleban and other insurgents battling the government in Afghanistan.
Bombings by unmanned aircraft are, however, common in neighbouring Pakistan, and are a key plank of US strategy to target militants who hide out in the lawless northwest border region then cross into Afghanistan to stage attacks.

Six US strikes have hit the district of North Waziristan already this year.
The drone programme is deeply controversial in Pakistan and fuels anti-American sentiment in the Muslim nation, but US officials say they are necessary to protect the foreign troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.
There are more than 113,000 international forces based in Afghanistan fighting an increasingly deadly insurgency which is aimed at toppling the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
Meanwhile, protesters claiming that international troops destroyed copies of the Holy Quran clashed with Afghan and foreign security forces on Tuesday, leaving six people dead, Afghan officials said.
In Washington, the commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan said on Monday that a US troop buildup in Afghanistan had started to turn the tide against the Taleban.
“We’ve been at this for about seven months now and I believe we’ve made progress,” General Stanley McChrystal said in an interview with ABC television.

But he added: “It’s not a completed mission yet.”
President Barack Obama last month approved McChrystal’s request for a major increase in US troops in Afghanistan, ordering 30,000 reinforcements.
The general recounted a recent meeting in the Helmand river valley in the country’s south — a former Taleban stronghold — as an example of progress underway.
“When I sit in an area that the Taleban controlled only seven months ago and now you meet with a shura of elders and they describe with considerable optimism the future, you sense the tide is turning,” he said in remarks posted on the US network’s website.
McChrystal issued a dire warning to Obama in September, saying the Afghan mission could fail without more troops.

Asked if NATO-led forces were shifting the momentum against Taliban insurgents, the general said: “I believe we’re doing it right now.
“I believe we’ve changed the way we operate in Afghanistan. We’ve changed some of our structures. I believe we are on the way to convincing the Afghan people that we are here to protect them.”
But he said time was short.
“I think that clock is in the minds of the Afghan people, so I do feel that we have got to move quickly to convince them that we can help them build a country,” he said.
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, also struck an optimistic tone on the US-led campaign in Afghanistan but said the effect of Pakistani operations on the other side of the border remained unclear.

“I think that we have been very successful in our operations,” Burgess told Voice of America in an interview.
But al-Qaeda and its Taleban allies still had the capacity “to cause pain and to bring about some of the more spectacular events that may occur from time to time,” he said.
It also was still difficult to assess the full impact of recent Pakistani offensives against Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan, he said.
“How many of the enemy has actually been taken off the board, so to speak?” Burgess said. “Or has the enemy melted away into the countryside or moved to another location?
“While there is always something to be gained by forcing the enemy out of its sanctuary, at the end of the day, I think this is an enemy that you are going to have to kill.”