KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 17 (UPI) — Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs said on Tuesday security forces killed at least 17 armed insurgents during fighting across the country.
The casualties occurred over 24 hours of joint operations by the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and National Directorate of Security in the Nangarhar, Badakhshan, Kandahar, Oruzgan, Paktika, Herat and Helmand provinces, according to a ministry statement.
Security forces injured another three militants and arrested two.
The announcement came one day after the ministry said three insurgents in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province accidentally blew themselves up planting a roadside bomb in the Noor Gal district.
On Monday, special police units operating in the Marjah district of Helmand province, to the south, found a massive depot of vehicles, radios, small arms, mortars, ammunition, rockets and bomb-making materials, including more than 6,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer often used in the creation of explosive devices.
The same day, the ministry said security forces killed 20 militants and arrested one other during operations in the Nangarhar, Takhar, Faryab, Oruzgan, Logar, Paktika and Helmand provinces.
On Sunday Afghan officials said more than 50 insurgents had been killed over the previous 24 hours, including Noor Rahman, the Taliban governor of the Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, who perished along with 11 other militants in a drone strike.
At the time, Taliban militants posted online statements claiming they killed more than a dozen security personnel over the past two days, including a police officer who died in a roadside bombing as his convoy passed through Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province.
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