BAGRAM, Aug 18: A US-led coalition base came under rocket attack in southeast Afghanistan over the weekend but there were no casualties, a US military spokesman said on Monday.

“One 107mm rocket landed in the vicinity of the coalition fire base at Zormat in Paktia province Saturday night,” Major Ralph Marino told reporters at the coalition’s Bagram Air Base headquarters, 50 kilometres north of Kabul.

Marino was unable to say who fired the rocket but similar attacks have been blamed on remnants of the Taliban, their Al Qaeda allies or supporters of renegade Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The Zormat base, 120 kilometres south of Kabul, has been attacked several times since it was set up late last month following a major anti-Taliban operation conducted mainly in the nearby Shahikot mountain valley of Paktia province which borders Pakistan.

Fifteen militants and seven Afghan soldiers were killed in neighbouring Paktika province on Sunday in a major battle against hundreds of suspected Taliban fighters who attacked the local government building in the border town of Barmal.

Marino said coalition forces were not involved in the fighting but were investigating the incident.

“We can’t be involved in every incident which happens with the Afghans,” he said.

Some 20 months after the fall of the Taliban, remnants of the militia have stepped up attacks on the coalition and Afghan forces and humanitarian targets, mainly in the south and southeast provinces which border Pakistan.

Around 1,000 soldiers from the new Afghan National Army backed by US and Italian troops last month took part in Operation Warrior Sweep in Paktia and Paktika provinces.—AFP