BAGRAM AIR BASE, Sept 8: Six Afghan soldiers were killed and two US troops wounded in weekend clashes with suspected Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan officials and the US military said on Monday, as American troops hunted militants fleeing the biggest anti-Taliban offensives in more than a year.

The US military also confirmed reports from Afghan officials that 124 militants had been killed one of the offensives, the nine-day old Operation Mountain Viper against rebel hideouts in the Daychopan mountains in southeast Zabul province, 300 kilometres southwest of Kabul.

“We can confirm that we have killed about 124 anti-coalition personnel,” Col Rodney Davis told reporters at Bagram Air Base, 50 kilometres north of Kabul.

He added that one US soldier was wounded on Sunday in a firefight with around five militants near Shkin in Paktika province, near where two US soldiers were killed in August.

Another US soldier was shot and wounded in a separate clash in the northeast border town of Barikot, Kunar province some 240 kilometres northeast of Kabul, Davis said.

Both wounded soldiers were being treated at Bagram, the headquarters of the US-led military coalition.

In further violence, six Afghan troops were killed on Sunday in an ambush north of the main southern city of Kandahar, the former stronghold of the ousted Taliban.

“Yesterday (Sunday) morning one of our military trucks coming from Shahwali Kot to town was attacked by Taliban who killed six soldiers and injured four others,” Commander Haji Shah Mohammad told AFP in Kandahar.

They called for reinforcements and 30 soldiers arrived to support them.

Mohammad said 10 suspects were arrested during subsequent fighting and a search operation, which was continuing.

US and Afghan forces are in the throes of two simultaneous anti-Taliban offensives aimed at driving resurgent Taliban out of Afghanistan’s insurgency-hit south and east.

“Coalition forces are engaged in a number of operations.... Operation Warrior Sweep is ongoing and Operation Mountain Viper is ongoing,” Davis said.

The offensives are among the largest since the March 2002 Operation Anaconda offensive against Taliban and Al Qaeda cave bases in the Shahi Kot valley in Paktia province.—AFP