‘Hundreds of Taliban killed or arrested’

The Afghan army supported by Nato forces killed, wounded or arrested hundreds of rebels when they took back a town that had been occupied by the Taliban for almost a year, the defence ministry said yesterday.
The troops drove the Islamist fighters out of the centre of Musa Qala district in southern Helmand province on Monday.
"Hundreds of terrorists including tens of foreign nationals were killed, wounded and arrested," ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told a news conference. He did not give a more precise breakdown.
By foreign nationals, Azimi was referring to militants from other countries said to be backing the Taliban in their growing insurgency.
Taliban fighters had stormed Musa Qala in early February, breaking a controversial deal in which British forces pulled out at the request of local elders after months of intense fighting.
Azimi repeated earlier statements that four civilians and two soldiers with Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) were killed in the operation.
Locals have said that many more civilians were killed, some in air strikes, but the Isaf and Afghan army have rejected this. Azimi also dismissed a media report of civilians killed by soldiers.
Food aid was meanwhile being brought in for about 2,000 families, said Lutfullah Mashal from the National Security Council, Afghanistan's top security body. That would account for about 12,000 people.
About 400 families were displaced by the fighting, he said.
A drive to reconstruct the area, starting with repairing the main mosques and building three new ones as well a high school, was in the planning, Mashal said. Surveys were also under way for power, road and water projects.
"More than 1,500 people were already employed for labour work in the district as a move to provide employment for the jobless," he said.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb struck a minibus in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing six civilians on board, the interior ministry said, blaming insurgents for the blast.
Six others were wounded in the attack in the south-central province of Uruzgan, it said in a statement that gave no details about the casualties.
Uruzgan and other provinces in the south have suffered the most in a wave of violence linked to an insurgency launched by the extremist Taliban movement that was in government between 1996 and 2001.