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KABUL : A wave of Taliban-linked violence across Afghanistan over the weekend killed 22 people including insurgents, a foreign soldier and two Afghan troops, authorities said Sunday.
Clashes and attacks have surged this month, with NATO-led offensives in the south leading to record foreign military casualties and the Taliban insurgency at its fiercest since the 2001 US-led invasion toppled their government.
In the Bargi Matal district of Nuristan, a mountainous province near Pakistan, Afghan forces backed by foreign troops pounded Taliban positions with artillery, killing 16 militants on Saturday, the defence ministry said.
"The enemy launched several rockets on a military outpost. The troops responded and killed 16 enemy fighters," it said.
Dozens of Taliban-linked militants stormed and briefly captured Bargi Matal district centre in the first week of July. Afghan and foreign forces recaptured the area days later in an assault which saw several rebels and police killed.
One foreign soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has also been reported killed in southern Afghanistan, a hotbed of Taliban unrest and the target of recent military offensives.
An ISAF statement said the soldier "died of wounds suffered in a hostile incident" on Saturday but did not reveal their nationality.
Also in the south, three local security guards were killed when a mine exploded in Helmand province, an attack the Ministry of Interior blamed on "enemies of peace and stability" -- a reference to the insurgents.
The defence ministry, meanwhile, said two Afghan soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a mine planted by the Taliban in eastern Paktika province, another insurgency-hit region on the Pakistan border.
Four Italian soldiers were also wounded Saturday in a roadside bomb blast in the western province of Herat, local officials said.
The latest violence came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Taliban was under "tremendous pressure" in Afghanistan.
"The Taliban, which is, as I believe strongly, part of a kind of terrorist syndicate with Al-Qaeda at the centre, is now under tremendous pressure, and I think that's in America's national interest," Clinton told NBC.
In addition to boosting the US military presence in the war-ravaged nation, Clinton said that, "importantly, we've seen the Pakistani government and military really step up, which had not happened to the extent it has now."
Clinton cited the porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan as facilitating the clandestine movements of extremist cells in the region where Washington and its allies believe Al-Qaeda operates terrorist training camps.
There are about 90,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan helping local forces stabilise Afghanistan, with thousands most recently deployed to the south to try and secure the restive area ahead of presidential polls on August 20.
The independent www.icasualties.org website, which tracks military losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, says 223 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, not including the latest death.
The website reports 67 killed in July alone -- the deadliest month for international forces since the 2001 invasion.
- AFP /ls
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