Around 70 Taliban fighters were killed in an overnight air strike by foreign forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand near the Pakistan border, the provincial governor has said.
The attack took place late yesterday in Helmand's Baram Cha district.
Violence in Afghanistan is running at its highest rate since the US-led invasion to wrest control from the militant Islamist Taliban movement in 2001.
NATO and the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan said they had no immediate information about the air strike.
Provincial authorities said earlier today that another 22 Taliban insurgents and six Afghan policemen were killed in overnight clashes in the south.
In another incident, gunmen killed six Afghan policemen at their checkpost in the same district.
NATO-led Afghan troops also killed four Taliban fighters in the Andar district of Ghazni province yesterday, a senior provincial police officer said.
