25 Taliban Fighters Killed in Southern Area

U.S.-led soldiers and Afghan forces killed 25 Taliban insurgents in this country’s volatile south, and NATO-led Canadian troops narrowly escaped a suicide bombing Friday near the site of fighting a day earlier that killed four comrades.

Acting on a tip from tribal elders, police in the southern province of Helmand raided an orchard Thursday night where Taliban fighters were camping and called in airstrikes, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail. The U.S.-led coalition said 25 Taliban fighters were killed.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization force took charge of security in the south this week from the coalition amid a barrage of violence that has left seven of its soldiers dead.

However, the coalition, which is not under NATO command, has retained responsibility for counterterrorism operations here.

In Kandahar province, a suicide bomber blew up his car Friday in Maywand district, narrowly missing a NATO patrol that drove away undamaged, officials said.

The Canadian soldiers, believing they had been attacked by roadside bombs, kept moving and left the investigation to local authorities, Canadian military spokesman Lt. Mark MacIntyre said.

The attack on the Canadian patrol came in the same area where militants Thursday killed four Canadian soldiers in separate incidents and a suicide car bomber killed 21 civilians.

In Kabul, the capital, President Hamid Karzai condemned Thursday’s bombing at a busy market as a “cowardly attack against our Muslim people,” and expressed sorrow at the deaths of the Canadian soldiers.