Afghan, NATO soldiers among 24 killed in Afghanistan

KABUL - A NATO soldier, three Afghan army personnel and 16 insurgents were killed in separate clashes in Afghanistan, and Taliban militants beheaded four militiamen, officials said Sunday.

In the latest incident, a NATO soldier was killed in a Taliban attack in volatile southern Afghanistan Sunday, NATO military forces said in a statement.

The statement did not disclose the soldier’s nationality, citing the alliance policy that does not reveal identity prior to the relevant national authorities doing so. The death took the total number of foreign troops killed so far this year in Afghanistan to 186.

Separately, a suicide squad and other fighters planned to attack a US military base in the Shindand district of the western province of Herat Saturday, Zeinudin Sharifi, an army commander for Afghan regional commandos, said.

The militants “by chance encountered” a group of pro-government fighters, locally hired to protect their villages, Sharifi told DPA.

“The militants beheaded four of the community defence forces, but the fifth one is still missing,” he said.

Afghan commandos and US forces stationed in a nearby military base were deployed to the area and killed 10 Taliban fighters, he said.

“Four of them were suicide bombers, who were killed when their suicide vests were detonated by bullets during the fighting,” Sharifi said, adding that there were no casualties among the combined forces.

The incident came five days after nine Taliban suicide bombers stormed government installations in the western province of Nimruz, killing four people including a provincial lawmaker. The nine bombers were also killed either by their own explosives or by Afghan police.

Separately, three Afghan soldiers were killed Saturday when Taliban militants attacked their unit in the Sangin district of the southern province of Helmand, the Afghan Defence Ministry said in a statement Sunday.

In the southeastern provinces of Paktia and Paktika, Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed six Taliban militants in two separate operations Saturday, the army statement said.