3 Danish soldiers killed
Three Danish soldiers, four Afghan security guards and three rebels were killed in clashes in insurgency-hit Afghanistan, authorities said yesterday, in the latest in a surge of violence in the country.
Three Danish soldiers were killed Wednesday when a bomb exploded as their vehicle passed in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand, the Danish military said.
The guards, who were escorting trucks that supply foreign forces' bases in southern Afghanistan, were killed after militants ambushed their convoy in Ghazni province on Tuesday, police said.
"The guards returned fire. The fighting between them lasted for one and a half hours. Four guards were martyred," deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Shaheedani told AFP.
The attackers were likely to have been Taliban insurgents and were also believed to have suffered casualties, the police chief said. He could not give details.
"We found blood on the ground which indicated that the Taliban also suffered casualties," he said.
Also Tuesday, three rebels were killed in a gunfight with Afghan army soldiers in the neighbouring province of Paktika, further east, the defence ministry said in a statement.
The gun battle erupted after militants armed with machineguns and rockets attacked an army convoy, it said.
"After the battle, the troops searched the area and found three bodies of the enemy. Weapons were also found," the statement said.
Taliban are among the main militant groups which, with support from al-Qaeda, are fighting the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai in an insurgency that has seen a record number of attacks this year.
Western military officials and Afghan leaders admit that the violence has increased in recent months as the war-scarred nation prepares for its second-ever presidential elections set for August.
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