KABUL, April 24, (AFP): Afghan security forces backed by Nato troops and air power killed around 20 Taliban insurgents in a region of northern Afghanistan that is becoming increasingly restive, officials said Saturday.
In one Nato air attack late Friday in the Char Dara district of Kunduz province, which borders Tajikistan, a militant commander and another fighter were killed, said Daud Ibrahimi, a senior security official.
Ibrahimi said the rebel commander, identified as Mullah Silab, was the most senior Taliban commander in the district, where the rebels have intensified their activities in recent years.
Two other militants associated with Silab were captured, he added.
Other raids overnight Friday killed a rebel “group commander” named Hamza and a dozen of his men in Dasht-i-Archi district, another troubled region in Kunduz, he said.
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed its involvement in the clash, saying the alliance force along with their Afghan counterparts killed several militants.

“Two of those killed were Taliban commanders, one of them being the targeted militant responsible for distributing insurgent funds, designating targets and planning bombings,” it said in a statement.
Ibrahimi also said the raid was aimed at Hamza.
Three policemen and several other militants were killed in a clash with police in the province’s Imam Saheb district, Kunduz provincial governor Mohammad Omar told reporters separately.
He said up to 15 insurgents were killed in the clashes between Taliban fighters and Afghan and international forces.
Most Taliban activity in Afghanistan was until recently concentrated in the country’s south and east but has spread north since the opening of an equipment supply route for US and Nato forces from Tajikistan.
An explosion which killed an American and an Afghan soldier on an army base in Kabul this week was carried out by a suicide bomber, the US military has confirmed, the second time in five months an insurgent has managed to infiltrate a base.
On Monday, Nato said one of its service members had died and several had been wounded in an explosion on an Afghan army base in the capital but gave no details. One Afghan soldier was also killed in the blast and three were wounded.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the attack was carried out by a Taliban infiltrator, who struck while foreign advisors were training Afghan troops.
The US Defense Department has now confirmed it was a suicide attack.
“Sergeant Robert J. Barrett, 20, of Fall River, Massachusetts, died April 19 in Kabul, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when a suicide bomber attacked his unit,” the department said in a statement.
Nato efforts to train Afghan forces have been plagued in recent months by rogue Afghan soldiers and police turning weapons on their trainers, and infiltrators gaining access to compounds meant to be secure.
The latest attack is the second in recent months in which an insurgent has managed to penetrate a military base and kill foreigners.
In December, a Jordanian infiltrator at a US base killed seven employees or contractors working for the CIA and a Jordanian intelligence officer. In November, an Afghan police trainee killed five British soldiers at a checkpoint.
The attack happened on an Afghan military base near Kabul’s airport, a combined civil-military facility which in the past has come under rocket attack as well as suicide strikes at its gates.
Last year was the deadliest for foreign forces in Afghanistan since the Taliban were overthrown in late 2001. A total of 520 troops, more than 300 of them American, died in 2009, according to icasualties.org, an independent website that monitors foreign troop deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first three months of this year have also seen a rise in troop deaths. Seventy-eight foreign troops died in the first three months of 2009, compared to 139 for the same period this year.
There are around 125,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, more than half of them American, and that figure is set to rise to around 150,000 by the year’s end.