February 22, 2008	Friday	Safar 14, 1429

KABUL, Feb 21: Clashes in southern Afghanistan in recent days have killed 32 militants, including two Taliban commanders, officials said on Thursday.

Separately, a remote-controlled roadside bomb hit a police convoy on Thursday in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, killing a policeman and wounding four others, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.

Also in Helmand, Afghan and US-led coalition troops fought on Wednesday with militants north of Musa Qala, leaving 30 suspected Taliban fighters dead, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Coalition aircraft bombed militant hide-outs during the five-hour battle, it said.

The coalition said 11 militants were detained and 450 kilograms of heroin were confiscated during the operation, but it did not report any casualties. The Defense Ministry claim of 30 deaths could not be independently verified.

A large weapons cache and a heroin processing lab were also destroyed, the coalition said.

Taliban militants were in control of Musa Qala for much of 2007 before Afghan, US and British troops regained control of the town and its surrounding areas in December.

Helmand is the world’s largest opium-producing region, and officials estimate that up to 40 per cent of proceeds from Afghanistan’s drug trade are used to fund the insurgency.

On Monday, Afghan and Nato-led troops attacked and killed regional Taliban commanders Mullah Abdul Matin and Mullah Karim Agha, who were responsible for a number of suicide bombing missions in Helmand, the alliance said on Thursday.

“As a result of this successful attack, the Taliban’s networks have suffered another severe setback,” said Brigadier-General Carlos Branco, a spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assist-ance Force.

The Taliban did not immediately confirm the deaths.

Elsewhere in Helmand, an explosion killed one British soldier and wounded another Wednesday, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement issued in London.

The blast hit a British patrol that was trying to disrupt Taliban activity, the ministry said, adding that the cause of the explosion was not immediately known.

The death brought to 89 the number of British service members killed in Afghanistan since the troops were deployed there in 2001.

In neighboring Kandahar province, authorities detained seven men suspected of involvement in the suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people on Sunday at a dog fight in the provincial capital, Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid said.

The bombing, which targeted a militia leader opposed to the Taliban, was the deadliest insurgent attack since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001.

Afghan intelligence agents rounded up the suspects on Wednesday in two separate operations in Kandahar city and in Arghandab district to the north, Khalid said.—AP