Bomb blast at Afghan security post kills 3
5 Taliban shot dead
Afp, Kandahar
Three people were killed when a bomb exploded at an Afghan security post on the border with Pakistan yesterday while security forces shot dead five suspected Taliban militants in separate encounters, officials said. The blast was at the Spin Boldak border post in the restive southern province of Kandahar, one of the areas hardest hit by a Taliban insurgency launched after the fundamentalist regime was removed from power in late 2001. "The explosion seemed to have been fairly big," Spin Boldak police chief Abdul Wasay told AFP after visiting the site of the blast. "Twenty people have been wounded. Two children and a woman have been killed," he said. Flames surrounded the blast site and the border was closed, said an AFP reporter in the Pakistani town of Chaman just across the border. In one of the latest incidents, a group of suspected Taliban fighters ambushed a convoy of US-led and Afghan forces in Kandahar's Shawali Kot district Tuesday, an official said. Three of the militants, including a commander identified as Mullah Abdullah, were killed in the return fire, district chief Hayatullah Popalzay told AFP. Another two suspected Taliban were killed in a swoop by security forces on Monday in neighbouring Zabul province, a provincial spokesman said. A Taliban commander identified as Mullah Naser Mohammad was captured in the raid, said provincial spokesman Gulab Shah Alikhil. More than 1,300 people, many of them militants, have been killed in almost daily attacks and clashes this year, up from 850 last year.
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