BRUSSELS, Oct 18: Nato expressed fresh concern on Wednesday about insurgents crossing into Afghanistan and warned that it was closely monitoring a Pakistani peace deal in a volatile border area to see if it has any effect.

“That border needs to be addressed,” said James Appathurai, spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

“There are certainly concerns in many circles that there is support for the... spoilers, in particular the Taliban coming from across the border,” he told journalists in Brussels.

His remarks came as Nato announced that troops and warplanes killed up to 14 insurgents on Tuesday after dozens of rebel gunmen ambushed a convoy in Afghanistan’s northeastern Nuristan province near the Pakistani border.

Separately, the Afghan army showed reporters the bodies of 24 men killed in a major battle in the eastern Paktia province on the same day, saying they included fighters from Chechnya, Pakistan, Turkey and Yemen.

That battle took place in an area that borders Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal district, where the Pakistani government signed a truce with pro-Taliban militants on September 5.

“Nato is looking carefully at that region and hoping and anticipating that the agreement will deliver results,” he said, by “reducing the number of insurgents crossing the border, or support for the insurgents and the Taliban crossing the border from Pakistan.”

He said the alliance’s commander plus his Afghan and Pakistan counterparts “will be looking very closely on a regular basis at the border issue.”

22 DIE: Nato airstrikes in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province killed nine civilians and wounded 11 others on Wednesday, the provincial governor said, while a firefight in neighbouring Helmand province killed 13 civilians, a resident said.

Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid said the strike in Zhari district, about 25km west of Kandahar, hit three homes. He said an unknown number of Taliban militants were also killed.

Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said an operation in Kandahar province was believed to have caused “several” civilian casualties.

The alliance said the operation was meant to detain people involved in roadside bomb attacks in Panjwayi district, which borders Zhari. Nato said it regretted any civilian casualties and that it makes “every effort” to minimise the risk of collateral damage during operations.

Also on Wednesday, a rocket hit a house during a nighttime clash between suspected Taliban insurgents and Nato and Afghan security forces in Helmand province’s Grishk district, 220km west of Kandahar city, police said. A resident said 13 villagers, including women and children, died.

At least one Taliban militant was killed and three police wounded in Tajikai village in southern Helmand province before the rocket slammed into the house, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhel.

—AFP/AP