February 01, 2007	Thursday	Muharram 12, 1428

KANDAHAR, Jan 31: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation planes bombed an alleged Taliban hideout in Helmand in an operation with Afghan forces that killed 30 fighters, police said on Wednesday.

Afghan and International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) soldiers raided the hideout in Kajaki area on Tuesday, Helmand police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail said. He said 10 to 15 people were wounded in the bombing.

A local Taliban commander, Shir Agha, was among the dead, he said.

“After the bombing, ground forces went to the area. There were some bodies but the wounded and some of the bodies had been taken away by the Taliban who survived the bombing,” he said.

A spokesman for British forces said in Lashkar Gah: “There was sporadic firing, sporadic engagements, as troops sought to clear some known Taliban compounds.”

The Kajaki area is home to the rundown Kajaki Dam, which is being rehabilitated so that it can provide power to a projected more than one million people. “We want to set the security conditions to allow the project to go ahead,” the British spokesman said.

A suicide attacker blew himself up close to an Isaf vehicle in Torkham on the border with Pakistan, a border police commander told AFP. “Only an interpreter for the troops was wounded”

A primary school was set ablaze overnight in the Kharwar district of Logar province, the interior ministry said in a statement.

“The ministry condemns this unforgivable action of foreign mercenaries,” it said. Police launched an investigation “to bring to justice the culprits”.

Meanwhile, international donors ended a conference in Berlin on reconstruction after agreeing new initiatives proposed by Afghanistan, including “accelerated Afghanisation of the national army and police, as well as in the area of economic development.” The promise to increase Afghan ‘ownership’ appeared to be a concession to pleas from the country to be allowed to play a greater role in spending billions of dollars of aid money.—AFP