NATO troops killed more than 20 insurgents in fighting in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday after a patrol came under fire, the coalition said, while in the north, Germany’s chancellor made a surprise visit to her nation’s troops.
In southern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber targeting a district chief in the city of Kandahar killed two passers-by, including a child, and wounded at least nine more people, authorities said.
Saturday’s gun battle between NATO forces and insurgents took place in the Tagab district of Kapisa province, where coalition forces called in air support after their patrol came under fire, NATO said. It added that Taliban commanders were among the more than 20 insurgents killed.
The fighting came a day after more than five insurgents were killed in a three-hour fire fight in the same district following sniper fire on Afghan and international forces manning a checkpoint, NATO said. The coalition did not say what nationality the international troops were, but French forces are stationed in the area.
About 3,850 French troops are deployed in Afghanistan, mainly in Kapisa and the Surobi district north and east of Kabul. A French soldier was killed on Friday after a reconnaissance mission came under fire in the neighbouring district of Alasay in Kapisa, bringing the total number of French soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 51.
Separately NATO said a coalition soldier was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, but it did not release the nationality of the casualty or the location of the attack.
Another soldier died of a noncombat injury in the north of the country on Friday, NATO said. The German military said one of its soldiers, a 21-year-old, died of a gunshot wound that appeared to be the result of an accident at a military post in Baghlan Province, but the matter was being investigated.
More than 670 international troops have died in Afghanistan so far this year. Germany currently has nearly 4,700 troops serving in Afghanistan and plans to start gradually withdrawing in late 2011.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, her defense minister and the military’s chief of staff arrived in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan where Germany has a base, on a surprise visit early Saturday.
She later continued to another German base at Mazar-i-Sharif, also in the north, where she met Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Before meeting Mr. Karzai, she said she planned to discuss administration and corruption with the Afghan leader.
“The progress here is not as we would envision,” she said.
Ms. Merkel thanked troops in Kunduz for their “extremely dangerous” deployment.
“You are embroiled in battles of the kind one has in war,” Merkel said. “That is an entirely new experience for us.”
Later, in Mazar-i-Sharif, she said that “we haven’t known something like this since the second World War.”
To the south, a suicide bomber blew himself up Saturday near an armoured car carrying a district chief in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, killing two civilians, including a child, and wounding at least another nine, Afghan authorities said. NATO said the bombing had wounded 11 children.
The bomber targeted Ahmadullah Nazak’s car in a residential and shopping area of the city as the official was travelling to a meeting, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor. Mr. Nazak was unharmed.
“I am safe and sound, and all of those who were in the car are also safe and sound,” Mr. Nazak told The Associated Press shortly after the explosion. He did not say how many people had been in the car with him.
Irfan Hameed, a doctor at the local hospital, said the bodies of a man and a boy killed in the blast were taken to the hospital, which was also treating five men and four children wounded in the attack.
Violence has been on the rise across much of Afghanistan, with the southern provinces of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and Helmand seeing much of the fighting. NATO forces have poured troops into both provinces.
Separately, NATO said on Saturday it had killed a senior Taliban leader in an airstrike in Badghis province in northern Afghanistan the previous day.
The military coalition said in a statement that the Taliban leader, Mullah Tor Jan, had been appointed by the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban command council based in Pakistan. The airstrike that killed him followed a fire fight that broke out as Afghan and international forces pursued “an armed individual” to a cave complex, the coalition said.
Badghis deputy chief of police, Abdul Jabar Khan, said Tor Jan was a senior Taliban commander responsible for planting mines along routes used by Afghan and international forces and for organizing attacks on police stations.
