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KABUL, Aug 13: Five Afghan soldiers and up to 20 extremists were killed in an ambush in southeast Afghanistan on Sunday, the US-led coalition said.
Six Afghan soldiers were also wounded in the ambush when extremists attacked their command post with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades in the Bermel district of Paktika province, the coalition said in a statement.
Three of the wounded soldiers suffered only minor injuries and returned to duty after being treated on the scene, the statement said.
The three others were evacuated by air to a hospital run by the coalition.
A coalition spokesman said on Sunday local and coalition forces would continue to provide security and assistance to Afghan people in the area despite the latest attack.
JALALABAD: Twenty people including women and children were wounded in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday when a rocket aimed at road construction workers hit a house, police said.
The rocket landed in the house in Shygal district of Kunar province close to a highway where Indian workers were asphalting a road, provincial police chief Abdul Jalal said.
The 120-kilometer road links Jalalabad in eastern Nangarhar province to Assadabad, the capital of Kunar province.
“The target of the attack was the road construction but it missed the workers and hit a house in the vicinity,” the police official said.
“Twenty men, women and children were wounded in the attack,” he added.
Taliban set ablaze two trucks and hijacked three others in Shah Joy district of southern Zabul province on Sunday, provincial police chief Nur Mohammad Pakteen said.
The trucks were transporting logistics to US-run bases in Kandahar, he said.
Taliban militants have killed at least 41 teachers and students in Afghanistan in the past 12 months, and security concerns have forced 208 schools to close, a government minister said on Sunday. Suspected Taliban were burning and attacking schools, education minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar said.—AFP
