30 Taliban Casualties in Airstrikes

Taliban battered from air
30 militants killed or wounded in south
By AP-Toronto Sun
8 Jun 07
KABUL, Afghanistan — A battle and airstrikes in southern Afghanistan left 30 suspected Taliban dead or wounded, and six people were arrested yesterday in the killing of a woman who owned a radio station, officials said.

The battle took place Wednesday in the Garmser district of Helmand province, the world’s largest poppy-growing region and site of fierce battles in recent months, the defence ministry said.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said officials could not say how many of the 30 reported casualties were killed or wounded. He said multiple sources were used to come up with the figure.

STRUGGLING

Backed by a U.S.-led coalition, including Canada, Afghanistan is struggling to build an effective central government while fending off insurgents supported by the Taliban, the extremist Islamic movement driven out in 2001.

Police arrested six people in the killing of Zakia Zaki, the owner and manager of Peace Radio, gunned down the previous day in the northern province of Parwan, Gen. Abdul Manan Farahi said. He said the six backed the militant group Hezb-e-Islami, a supporter of the Taliban-led insurgency.

Zaki had been critical of local warlords, who had warned her to change the station’s programming, said Rahimullah Samandar, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association. Zaki told other journalists that she had received death threats.

RELEASED

Her death came less than a week after a female reporter, Shokiba Sanga Amaaj, was shot in her Kabul home.

Also yesterday, four kidnapped Afghan medical workers were released after the body of a slain top Taliban commander was retrieved by his family, although a purported spokesman for the militants said a fifth abducted medical worker was beheaded.

Elsewhere, suspected militants attacked a government compound in the Daychopan district of Zabul province, killing a policeman and wounding three others, district police chief Hakim Khan said.

In eastern Afghanistan, coalition and Afghan troops killed a militant during a firefight in Nangarhar province’s Khogyani district, a coalition statement said.

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