Dozens killed in Afghanistan as foreign troops head home

The Afghan Taliban killed a Supreme Court official, a group of mine clearers and two foreign soldiers, but also suffered heavy losses as violence intensified in the run-up to the withdrawal of most international troops.

The Afghan army has said it killed more than fifty insurgents in the past 48 hours.

On Saturday, Taliban gunmen on motorbikes killed a dozen workers deactivating land mines near the former British base of Camp Bastion.

In Kabul, more gunmen shot dead senior Supreme Court official Atiqullah Raoufi.

“As Atiqullah Raoufi was leaving his house, gunmen opened fire and shot him dead,” said Hashmat Stanekzai, a spokesman for Kabul’s police chief, adding that no one had been detained.

The Taliban, ousted from power by US-backed Afghan forces in 2001, claimed responsibility but did not say why it had killed him. The hardline Islamist insurgents run their own courts in parts of the country and consider the official judiciary to be corrupt.

Heavily fortified Kabul has seen multiple attacks in recent weeks, including a suicide bomb that killed a German citizen in a French cultural centre during a performance of a play that denounced suicide attacks.

Another blast was heard in western Kabul on Saturday afternoon. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Fatalities and injuries among Afghan security forces and civilians peaked this year to the highest point since the US-led war began in 2001, as foreign forces rapidly withdrew most of their troops from the interior of mountainous nation.

About 5,000 Afghan police and soldiers have been killed, and more than 1,500 civilians. A rump of about 13,000 foreign soldiers will remain in Afghanistan next year, down from a peak of more than 130,000.

Fighting has extended long beyond the traditional summer season, with the Afghan government also inflicting heavy casualties on the Taliban. The army and police say they killed more than 50 militants nationwide in the past 48 hours.

The Taliban has been fighting a guerrilla war ever since its 5-year regime was toppled. It now has a strong presence in most of the provinces surrounding Kabul.

Just outside the city and close to the US-run Bagram airfield, the Taliban detonated a roadside bomb on Friday night, hitting a convoy of foreign troops and killing two soldiers.

The blast left a 3 metre-long blackened fissure in the road, a witness said. Helicopters buzzed overhead on Saturday morning.

“Two International Security Assistance Force service members died as a result of an enemy forces attack in eastern Afghanistan on December 12th, 2014,” a coalition press release said on Saturday.

The Bagram attack came two days after the United States closed a prison that held foreign detainees on the airfield, which is in Parwan province, the only province adjacent to the capital that is usually relatively peaceful.

It also followed a Nato air strike on Thursday that killed five people in the same province. Afghan officials said the casualties were civilians. The coalition said it was investigating the allegations, but that they were identified from the air as militants before the "precision" strike.

Reuters