US strike kills eight

At least eight Afghan nomads, including women and children, were killed in a US air strike in Afghanistan that also killed two Taliban guerrillas, Afghan officials said yesterday.

In a separate incident, Taliban guerrillas killed a district police chief in the southern province of Kandahar, underscoring a revival of violence recently in a country that has seen mostly strife for the past quarter-century.

Afghanistan meanwhile announced a long-delayed reform of the powerful Defence Ministry yesterday and said it would allow the start next month of an ambitious plan to disarm factional militias threatening security and elections.

The civilians died in their beds when a bomb landed on their tent in Naw Bahar district of the southern province of Zabul on Wednesday night, said deputy provincial governor Mohammad Omar. A US military spokesman said he could not immediately confirm the report.

Mohammad Gul Neyazi, a top commander of the Taliban, and another Taliban guerrilla were also killed during the attack in the remote district near the border with Pakistan, Omar said.

It was unclear if the guerrillas had been in the same tent, but the governor of Zabul province, Hafizullah, said on BBC radio that Taliban fighters were known to have taken refuge with nomads in the area in the past.

Major Ralph Marino, a US military spokesman in Afghanistan, said he had no information about the incident. But the US military said on Thursday air strikes by US-led forces had killed 11 Taliban fighters over the previous three days in Zabul and neighbouring Kandahar province.

The strikes were part of "Operation Mountain Viper", launched in August in response to the presence of hundreds of Taliban guerrillas and their allies in Uruzgan and Zabul provinces.

Reform of the Defence Ministry was announced in Kabul a day before President Hamid Karzai leaves on a foreign tour of the United States, Canada and Britain, during which he is expected to seek additional help to boost security ahead of general elections due next June.

The government has said restructuring of the ethnic Tajik-dominated defence ministry was aimed at making it more ethnically representative and efficient, but the 22 appointments announced on state television fell short of sweeping change.

Omar said government troops and soldiers from US-led foreign forces in Afghanistan were hunting Taliban fugitives in several districts of Zabul yesterday, but did not have details.

A spate of violence, mostly in the southern parts of the country, has killed more than 280 and wounded scores since the start of August, including civilians, Afghan aid workers, police and militiamen, three US soldiers and many Taliban guerrillas.

The Taliban, overthrown by US-led forces in late 2001 for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters, have been involved in most of the incidents - the bloodiest period since its fall from power.

Afghanistan is littered with unexploded ordinance from its quarter-century of war and civil strife and is considered to be perhaps the most heavily mined country in the world.