KANDAHAR, May 15: Air strikes on Taliban rebels in southern Afghanistan killed about 60 fighters, a provincial police chief said Tuesday, while the defence ministry issued a much lower death toll of 11.

The Nato-led force meanwhile rejected claims by the Afghan police and defence ministry that it was involved.

Confusion about operations and death tolls is not uncommon, with the various military groups tasked with hunting down the militants blamed for destabilising Afghanistan often issuing different accounts of events.

“Sixty Taliban militants were killed in a Nato-led aerial operation last night on a Taliban gathering point in Zahri district of Kandahar province,” provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai said.

The strikes targeted a meeting of Taliban fighters late on Monday and were followed by ground troops who entered villages in the province on Tuesday, Alizai said. The dead included three well-known Taliban commanders, he said.

Zahri, about 30 kilometres east of Kandahar city, has been a flashpoint for Taliban violence and is close to where the militant movement was born in the early 1990s. However, the Afghan defence ministry said only 11 militants were killed, according to its reports. “In the joint Afghan National Army and Nato forces military operation 11 terrorists were killed in Nato air strikes,” it said in a statement.

And Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was “unaware, at this time, of any Nayo air strikes or significant operations near Kandahar early this morning.” A man claiming to be a Taliban commander in Kandahar and Helmand, Mullah Mohammad Ibrahim Hanafi, said the latest military action had been preceded by a Taliban offensive.

“Following that attack, Nato helicopters arrived in the area and they bombed the area. A number of Taliban were martyred as a result but I don't have exact figures,” he said.

Hanafi said the movement had arrested three “spies” in Zahri Tuesday and they were expected to be hanged later in the day.—AFP