Bagram Air Base (Afghanistan), Sept 27: Militants attacked a convoy of US-led troops with a bomb and small arms fire while they were on patrol overnight in insurgency-hit southeast Afghanistan, a US military spokesman said today. Colonel Rodney Davis said there were no casualties on either side from the clash near Gardez in the Paktia province, some 100 km south of Kabul. "The enemy fighters fired small arms at the coalition patrol and detonated an improvised explosive device", Davis told reporters at the US-led military coalition's Bagram air base headquarters north of Kabul. He said the militants retreated as coalition soldiers returned fire. Davis did not say who the attackers were but similar incidents have been blamed on Taliban fighters, their Al-Qaeda allies or supporters of former Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Coalition troops and military bases in Paktia and other provinces on the Afghan-Pakistan border have come under regular attack from militants.
Another group of coalition troops discovered and destroyed three rockets while on patrol near Gardez while investigating an explosion, Davis said without giving any details of the blast.
Southern and southeastern Afghanistan have been hard-hit by a surge of violence blamed on apparently resurgent Taliban militants who have stepped up attacks on US and Afghan troops and aid workers nearly two years after the hardline regime was toppled by US-led forces.
Bureau report