Troops kill 60 rebels, make largest Afghan drugs bust

Troops killed 60 militants and seized their largest-ever drugs haul in a just-ended operation that smashed an insurgent hub in southern Afghanistan, the military said Saturday.
The four-day operation was in Helmand province where a British soldier was killed in a separate incident on Friday, officials said.
The operation ended overnight when air strikes destroyed 92 tonnes of drugs and masses more heroin-processing chemicals and bomb-making materials collected in the sweep of Marja, southwest of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
"A total of 60 militants were eliminated as they mounted an ineffective and uncoordinated defence against friendly forces," a joint US and Afghan military statement said, issuing a final tally.
The statement said the troops had also "seized the single-largest drug cache by Afghan-led forces in Afghanistan to date".
They moved all "friendly elements" from a bazaar in the area at midnight Friday, it said.
"With the area cordoned off, precision air strikes destroyed the narcotics, bomb-making materials, weapons and munitions discovered during the operation," it said.
"The air strikes targeted specific militant buildings used as command nodes and drug-making facilities in which attacks against Afghan and coalition forces were coordinated."
Helmand, where thousands of British troops are based for a Nato-led military force helping Afghanistan, is the main producer of Afghan opium, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's supply.
Most of it is turned into heroin and smuggled to markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The vast province is also a stronghold for the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001 and are now waging an al-Qaeda-linked insurgency.
The operation had confirmed that Marja was a "hub of multiple types of militant and criminal activity", the statement said.
The haul included 92,271 kilograms (203,423 pounds) of narcotics, including 75,000 kilograms of opium poppy seeds, 16,850 kilograms of black tar opium as well as morphine, heroin and hashish.

The troops also seized an "unprecedented amount" of heroin-processing materials, including tonnes of chemicals and soda ash.
They also discovered large amounts of bomb-making materials, including 27 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, pressure plate triggers, explosives and various types of mortars, the statement said.
"The four-day operation severely disrupted one of the key militant and criminal operations and narcotics hubs in southern Afghanistan," US military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian said.
Afghan and international officials say the Taliban earn millions of dollars a year from the drugs trade, including by charging poppy farmers a tax and for protecting poppy fields and trafficking routes from the authorities.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the US Senate Thursday that countering narcotics networks was crucial to weakening the Taliban and allied insurgent groups.
However, there had been "almost no success" in doing that in the nearly eight years since the Taliban were removed from government in a US-led invasion, the top US military officer said.
In other insurgency-linked incidents reported Saturday, the British defence ministry said one of its soldiers was killed in Helmand's Sangin district when he was shot while on foot patrol Friday.
The Afghan army said 20 more militants were killed late Friday in an ongoing operation in the northwestern province of Badghis, which borders Turkmenistan.