NATO and Afghan security forces cornered Ghulam Sakhi at a compound on Friday night in the Puli Alam district of Logar province and called for women and children to leave the building, a coalition statement said.

"As they were exiting, Sakhi came out with the group disguised in women's attire and pulled out a pistol and a grenade and shot at the security force," the statement by NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

"When Afghan and coalition forces shot him he dropped the grenade and it detonated, wounding a woman and two children."

Sakhi was known by several aliases and involved in attacks on Afghan and foreign forces using improvised explosive devises (IEDs), the main Taliban weapon in a war now in its ninth year.

He had also been involved in the kidnap and killing of a security chief in Logar, ISAF said.

Separately, at least two people were killed by a suicide bombing in front of the highway police headquarters in Tarin Kot, capital of the central province of Uruzgan, officials said.

"So far we have received in our hospitals two civilian dead bodies and four civilians wounded from the incident. We were told some other wounded were taken to a NATO hospital," provincial health director Jan Agha Miakhail told AFP.

Criminal investigation police chief Mohammad Gulab said the police headquarters had been targeted by the suicide bomber.

Afghan and international forces also killed several insurgents in an air strike Friday night in the southern province of Zabul, ISAF said.

After the air strike, aimed at groups waging roadside bomb attacks, troops found materials used for making IEDs, as well as automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers at the scene, it said.

The statement added that the military took steps to protect civilians before calling in the air strike.

Civilian casualties are an incendiary issue in Afghanistan, even though the United Nations reported early this year that the vast majority of civilian deaths are caused by Taliban attacks.

The former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, limited air strikes as he made minimising civilian casualties a tenet of the counter-insurgency.

He was sacked this week for insubordination and replaced by General David Petraeus, the chief architect of the counter-insurgency strategy.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News