KABUL - A US drone strike has killed at least five suspected Taliban militants on Saturday night including a key commander in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said Sunday.
At least four other militants were reportedly wounded in the attack, which took place in the Lal Por district, some 150 kilometers, east of the capital Kabul.
Provincial police spokesman Colonel Hazrat Hussein Mashriqiwal told Anadolu Agency the overnight strike had targeted Taliban fighters moving from Lal Por district to the neighboring area.
“A Taliban commander Habib is among those killed, but his identity has yet to be confirmed,” he said.
In a similar incident, at least 15 suspected Pakistani Taliban have been killed in a deadly US drone attack on Wednesday in the Gomal district of the southeastern Paktika province, on the border with Pakistan.
The militants belonged to the Pakistani Taliban group of Mulla Fazlullah who is on the Pakistani army’s wanted list.
While US-led foreign forces withdrew from combat operations in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, there has been an increase in the number of drone strikes against militants, on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Separately, the National Directorate for Security (NDS), the Afghan intelligence agency, said it had arrested the Taliban’s shadow governor for the Nazian district of Nangarhar.
In a statement, the NDS said Mawlawi Abdullah along with five fighters were arrested in the district without giving an exact time. “The group was involved in various bomb attacks and operations in the province.