5 suspected militants killed in Afghanistan

KABUL (AP) - NATO-led forces and Afghan troops killed three suspected militants during a raid Saturday in central Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks have spiked this year, officials said. At least two other suspected militants died in an airstrike in the south.

The joint force was targeting insurgent commanders in a village in Logar province. The three suspected militants were killed in a gunfight following a call for them to surrender, a NATO statement said.

About 3,000 U.S. troops serving under the NATO-led command have been deployed in Logar and Wardak provinces in an attempt to clear the two major insurgent strongholds, which border Kabul.

President Barack Obama also has ordered 21,000 new American troops to join the fight in southern Afghanistan, which is the center of the Taliban’s revival since its initial defeat in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

There are some 70,000 international forces in Afghanistan, including a record 38,000 Americans.

Violence in Logar has risen this year as more new U.S. troops have been sent to the province, according to an assessment from the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, a Kabul-based group funded by Western donors that advises relief groups on security.

In the first two weeks of April, Logar accounted for 80 percent of the insurgent attacks in central Afghanistan, the group said in its biweekly report.

“Ultimately, the arrival of further forces has proven to be a destabilizing influence and has had a negative impact on the local population, primarily a result of methods utilized,” the report said. It did not elaborate, but international troops have been harshly criticized by Afghanistan’s government for killing civilians in raids and airstrikes in remote areas of the country.

Airstrikes have been a major cause of civilian casualties over the past year, despite repeated assertions by the U.S. military that they make every effort to target specific insurgents and avoid civilian deaths.

“We take as much precision as absolutely possible, to the point of calling off attacks if we do not believe we have the exact information required,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, the air component commander for U.S. Central Command.

Speaking to reporters at the U.S. base at Bagram, North said they use intelligence from multiple sources, such as video surveillance, reconnaissance patrols and electronic intercepts, to follow a target for weeks or months until they have enough information to act.

“Mistakes in combat have been made and we know that we have been responsible for some noncombatant casualties. We regret these incidents. We try very hard every day to prevent them from happening,” North said.

An airstrike on an underground bunker in the southern Kandahar province killed at least two suspected militants Saturday, a U.S. forces statement said.

U.S. troops attacked multiple compounds in Kandahar’s Maywand district “to locate and capture a militant closely associated with the anti-Afghan forces leadership in Pakistan,” the statement said.

It was not clear whether the target of the raid was among those killed.

Afghan and Western officials insist that the insurgency in Afghanistan is run and supported by Taliban leaders who now live in Pakistan, a charge denied by Pakistani authorities.

Separately, a roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle in Kandahar city killed a woman and wounded five other people including three civilians, said Abdullah Khan, the provincial deputy police chief.

The bomb was placed on a bicycle close to the city’s main hospital. Two police officers were wounded, and one of the injured civilians was being held as a suspect in the attack, Khan said.

Taliban militants regularly use roadside bombs in attacks on Afghan and foreign troops in the country, but most of the victims have been civilians.

___

Associated Press writer Heidi Vogt in Bagram contributed to this report.