Up to 33 police and five civilians were killed in
fighting after Taleban crossed over from Pakistan and attacked a remote
region in eastern Afghanistan.
Nuristan
provincial governor Jamaluddin Badr said about 40 rebels also died in
the two days of clashes that followed weeks of tit-for-tat allegations
of cross-border attacks that have fanned diplomatic tensions.
But the interior ministry contradicted the toll and said 12 policemen had died and another five were wounded.
Dozens
of rebels who began crossing the border from Pakistan on Tuesday
triggered the fight, Badr told AFP, attacking police posts in the
Kamdesh district of Nuristan.
“The
report we have now from the area is that 33 border police and five
civilians, two of them women, have been killed,” he said.
He said most of the dead rebels were Pakistan Taleban.
The
interior ministry said that “dozens” of rebels were killed in a
clearance operation that lasted several hours, 12 of them Pakistanis.
“The
situation in the border areas of Kamdesh district has returned to
normal and police are strengthening their positions,” it said.
The
escalating conflict in the rugged border zone between Afghanistan and
Pakistan has forced more than 200 Afghan families to flee so far,
according to local officials, and is escalating tensions between the
uneasy neighbours.
For
weeks, security forces on both sides of the unmarked border have issued
claim and counter-claim over cross-border rocket and guerrilla attacks
that have reportedly killed dozens of villagers and terrified hundreds
of others.
The
rise in violence in an area swamped with Taleban and Al Qaeda-linked
fighters underscores the problems faced in attempts to forge contacts
between militants and regional power brokers and peacefully resolve a
decade of war.
US
troops earlier this year abandoned their easternmost outposts in the
furthest reaches of Kunar and Nuristan provinces and since then
insurgents have flooded back into Afghan valleys by the border,
analysts say.
Afghan
officials say about 800 rockets, mortars and artillery shells have been
fired from Pakistan into Afghan villages since late May, leaving dozens
of civilians dead, injured or displaced.
The
Pakistan army denies it has targeted Afghan territory, saying that a
few stray rounds may have crossed the border and complaining that
villages on its side of the border have themselves been the victim of
Afghan-based Taleban violence.
On
Wednesday, Pakistani officials accused several hundred militants of
infiltrating the border and attacking a village in the Pakistani
district of Upper Dir, killing an anti-Taleban elder and setting fire
to three boys schools.
“The village militia and Pakistan troops are retaliating,” district police chief Mir Qasim Khan told AFP.
In
Afghanistan, the top border police commander for the eastern region,
General Aminullah Amerkhail, has resigned in protest at Kabul’s
reluctance to respond with counter-attacks, and ministers have reacted
with fury.
President
Hamid Karzai has appealed for calm over the issues, but has expressed
“deep concerns” with Pakistan’s top commander General Ashfaq Kayani and
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in a recent meeting. AFP
