BAGRAM, Sept 16: About 7,000 US and Afghan government forces launched an offensive against the Taliban in central and eastern Afghan provinces on Saturday as a Nato-led operation wound down in the south.

About 4,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 3,000 troops with the US-led coalition launched the main ‘manoeuvre’ phase of Operation Mountain Fury in five provinces, three of them on the Pakistan border, the coalition said.

The operation was ‘not only to disrupt Taliban extremists in the region but to continue the process of economic growth and development’, spokesman Lt-Col Paul Fitzpatrick said at the main US base at Bagram near Kabul.

The offensive covers Khost province, the coalition said without releasing the nationalities of the troops.

Four Afghan army soldiers were also wounded and two Taliban killed, an Afghan official said.

Police, meanwhile, said on Saturday that a man strapped with explosives had blown up near Khost’s provincial capital, apparently botching a suicide attack.

Mountain Fury also covers eastern Paktika, Ghazni and Paktia provinces, and central Logar which adjoins the capital.

Another operation, Medusa, was meanwhile winding down, an International Security Assistance Force spokesman said on Saturday. It was aimed at driving out insurgents in Kandahar.

ISAF says more than 500 Taliban have been killed in Medusa. It admits some civilians have also died and is investigating how many.

Three men working for a US-funded water project were killed in Kabul when a remote-controlled bomb struck their car.

—AFP