KANDAHAR, June 3: Nearly 35 Taliban rebels were killed in the latest strikes in Afghanistan as Afghan and coalition troops took back a district that had been in rebel hands for days, officials said.

Coalition planes also bombed an “enemy stronghold” in the south while an Afghan working for a Bangladeshi aid group was shot dead in the north and an influential tribal chief and top provincial health official were killed elsewhere.

Dozens of troops were dropped from coalition aircraft into a remote, mountainous district of Uruzgan province late Friday and recaptured the area which had been overrun by Taliban nearly three days earlier, the defence ministry said.

“At least 15 Taliban dead bodies were found. The overall Taliban casualties are believed to be 20,” it said in a statement.

The forces met “limited resistance” as the rebels fled Chora district about 40 kilometres (northwest of provincial capital Tarin Khowt, the US-led coalition said.

“Coalition air power engaged and killed several insurgents...,” its the statement said.

Taliban fighters overran the district late Tuesday, setting fire to the small district headquarters and some government vehicles, officials said.

The Taliban movement, trying to regain control of the government that it lost in 2001, often claims to hold districts but this was the first time officials had admitted they had control of an area for more than a few hours.

A spokesman for the Kandahar governor said another 12 suspected Taliban were killed after police resisted an attack on a checkpost in the southern province late Friday.

Five more were killed in an Afghan security sweep of Ghazni province, police said.

In neighbouring Paktika province on the border with Pakistan, unknown attackers shot dead the provincial head of public health, Eid Mohammad, and his brother, governor Mohammad Akram Ikhpulwak told AFP.

Taliban militants were on Saturday the main suspects in the murder of a tribal chief who had been helping to persuade members of Taliban regime to work with the new government, police said.

Haji Mursalen was shot dead in Kunar province, also on the border, while praying in a mosque Friday, police said.

President Hamid Karzai said he was “deeply disturbed by this act of terror”.

“This is an attack on Islam and no Muslim would kill another Muslim during prayer,” he said in a statement.

And in northern Baghlan province gunmen burst into the home of an Afghan employee with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) development group and shot him dead, police said.

The motive for the murder in the early hours of Friday was unclear, with the province relatively free of attacks by the Taliban. Nearly 50 Afghan and international NGO workers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002.

The US-led coalition announced meanwhile that it had dropped three precision guided bombs on “enemy extremists” loading munitions into a truck from a cave in southern Helmand province.

It was too early to tell how many people had been killed in the strike on Friday on Musa Qala district, it said in a statement.—AFP