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18 killed in fresh Afghan violence

* NATO troops kill 10 Taliban including senior commander
* Taliban kill eight Afghan policemen in Kandahar

KABUL: NATO troops killed 10 Taliban including a senior commander in southern Afghanistan, officials said on Monday, striking a blow in the group’s heartland where the US plans to send thousands of additional troops to stem the growing violence.

Meanwhile, the Taliban killed eight Afghan policemen in the Kandahar province.

Senior Taliban commander Maulawi Hassan and his associates were killed on Saturday when NATO troops attacked an isolated compound in the Kajaki area of southern Helmand province, NATO said in a statement, adding that there were no civilians involved.

“Maulawi Hassan was a senior insurgent figure in northern Helmand, and his influence extended into western Oruzgan,” the statement said.

On Monday, Afghan police and intelligence agents detained five Taliban in Oruzgan, including the group’s senior commander for the province, Mullah Azizullah, said police officer Wali Jan.

The Taliban were stopped in Arzo district while driving from Quetta, Jan said.

The eight Afghan police who were killed on Monday were ambushed by Taliban fighters while on patrol in southern Kandahar province’s Spin Boldak district, said Sahib Jan, a police officer. The attack also wounded one policeman, he said.

On Sunday, a rocket slammed into the main NATO military base in the south, killing a contractor and wounding six others.

Kandahar airfield, the nerve centre for the alliance’s war effort in southern Afghanistan, has been hit by many rockets in the past but Sunday’s death was the first in such an attack, another NATO statement said.

Two NATO soldiers also were killed on Sunday in a “hostile incident” in the south, a third NATO statement said, without releasing the soldiers’ nationalities or the exact location of the attack. The deaths came two days after four Canadian troops and a NATO soldier also were killed in the south.

Obama said in a broadcast interview Sunday that sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan must be part of a comprehensive strategy that includes an exit plan to avoid “perpetual drift.”

Obama’s comments were a prelude to a revamped plan for fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is expected to be announced this week. On Friday, a military official said the overhauled US strategy would call for new garrisons in far-flung Afghan communities to better hold off the Taliban.

Obama’s plan covers the next three to five years, with the goals of containing the insurgency, heading off the possibility that it could topple Afghanistan’s fragile central government and providing enough security for Afghan citizens that they reject the insurgents, the official said Friday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the review was not complete.

In the interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes”, Obama said the most difficult decision he has had to make in his two-month-old presidency was to send more troops to Afghanistan, which he decided before completion of the strategic review on the region. ap

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