Taliban take more casualties, drugs seized

Reuters/Washington Post:

NATO troops have killed almost 50 Taliban guerrillas and several civilians in fighting in the Islamist group's southern heartland, witnesses and alliance officials said on Wednesday.

A NATO spokesman said 48 insurgents had been killed in three separate clashes, along with several civilians, on Tuesday in an area which NATO said had been cleared of hundreds of rebels during a two-week offensive last month.

Residents of Panjwayi district, near the provincial capital of Kandahar, Kandahar city, said up to 60 people had been killed in the attacks by the NATO-led International Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) on Tuesday.

...

"The bombardment continued for four to five hours and the NATO troops took away some of the injured in the morning," Haji Nek Muhammad, 50, from Zangwardi village said of one attack.

...

Earlier, NATO said its forces and Afghan police seized more than 9 tonnes of hashish in a southeastern province bordering Pakistan, a major smuggling route.

The drugs were found in a truck after the driver was stopped at a checkpoint in Zabul province, NATO said in a statement. The driver and three others in the truck were arrested.

Since April, more than 13.5 tonnes of narcotics have been confiscated by police in what the United Nations has said will be a record year for the production of opium, the raw material for heroin.

...

Many in the media focused on the alleged civilian casualties that resulted from the contact witht he enemy. While it is an important part of the story it is important for a different reason than most of the media coverage. It is another example of the enemy violating the Geneva Conventions by using civilians as human shields. Their lack of identify uniform, also a violation of the Geneva Conventions, made the situation worse and contributed to the civilian casualties.

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