NATO forces in Afghanistan said they had killed at least 31 Taliban fighters and captured a rebel chieftain after a raid on an insurgent hideout in the southern province of Helmand.
Troops called in air support during running gunbattles in the province's troubled Baghran district, which erupted after rebels attacked soldiers moving in on the compound with machine guns and rockets, it said.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement that the Taliban chief of Naw Zad, another restive district of Helmand, was injured and detained following the fighting.
‘Afghan and international security forces captured the Taliban district chief of Naw Zad and killed a large number of insurgents during an operation in remote Baghran district in northern Helmand province last night,’ it said.
German army General Josef Blotz, a spokesman for ISAF, said at least 31 insurgents had been killed in the operation.
‘Throughout the four-hour firefight enemy forces attempted to use improvised explosive devices against the security force,’ he told reporters, referring to home-made bombs regularly used by the Taliban.
‘However Afghan and coalition forces employed precision air fire and suppressed the enemy,’ adding that a huge arms cache and a quantity of opium had been discovered and destroyed.
Troops captured several wounded insurgents following the fighting, ISAF's statement said, and no civilian or soldier was hurt.
Taliban militants are waging an insurgency against tens of thousands of international troops in Afghanistan under UN mandate to help keep President Hamid Karzai government's in power.
Meanwhile, US General David Petraeus visited NATO headquarters in Brussels to confer with allies before heading to war in Afghanistan to take command of the faltering campaign.
His visit came just one day after the US Senate unanimously confirmed him as the new war commander with lawmakers hoping Petraeus, credited in Washington with turning the Iraq war around, could do the same in Afghanistan.
US President Barack Obama picked Petraeus to take charge of the 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan after he fired General Stanley McChrystal for insubordination.
