A senior Taliban leader responsible for a wave of violence across southern Afghanistan has been killed in a NATO air strike, military officials said Wednesday.
The precision air strike, which killed nine militants in total, is believed to have left Mullah Manan dead.
He is linked to an uprising in the nearby town of Musa Qala, which the Taliban overran on Feb. 1, and for an attack Tuesday against a dam in nearby Kajaki.
"We have removed yet another Taliban enemy leader who will no longer threaten the peace and security of the Afghan people and their future,'' said Lt. Col. Angela Billings, a spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
The air strike against the compound in a small village outside Musa Qala killed nine Taliban fighters who had been seeking shelter there the previous night, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail.
But Musa Qala locals said the death toll was as high as 20, with several civilians killed.
However, the toll could not be independently confirmed.
Malakhail said he had no reports of civilian casualties, but Abdul Ali, a tribal elder from Musa Qala, said some family members who lived at the compound were also killed.
Billings said the compound was "a legal and legitimate military target'' and that according to NATO's evaluation there was no collateral damage.
"We hit the building we intended to strike,'' she said.
Helmand province has seen fighting between NATO forces and the Taliban escalate this year with many of its districts out of government control.
At least 22 Taliban fighters were killed by NATO and Afghan forces in clashes near Musa Qala and Kajaki in recent days.
Col. Tom Collins, a spokesman for the NATO-led force, charged that Taliban militants have used children as human shields near Kajaki.
"Taliban extremists resort to the use of human shields, specifically using local Afghan children to cover (them) as they escaped out of the area,'' he told a news conference Wednesday.
The government is negotiating with local elders in the hopes that Taliban fighters will leave Musa Qala without violence.
In the meantime, thousands of residents have fled out of fear of an imminent offensive by NATO and Afghan forces.
Some 4,000 people died in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count based on numbers from U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.
One day earlier, NATO's top commander renewed an appeal for allies to fill gaps in the international military force in Afghanistan.
Gen. John Craddock warned that the failure to bolster the troops was weakening the mission and threatening the lives of soldiers fighting Taliban insurgents.
"We do not have adequate forces,'' Gen. John Craddock told reporters.
"It makes accomplishing the mission that more difficult. It places every NATO soldier there at greater risk.''
Hours earlier on Tuesday, a Senate committee in Canada said the government should a consider withdrawing from Afghanistan unless NATO allies deliver additional troops.
Canada's 2,500 troops, who play a key role in the frontline southern provinces, have suffered relatively high casualties.
"It's certainly a very large area of responsibility that we have here," Lt.-Col Omer Lavoie, Battle Group Commander told CTV's Canada AM.
Lavoie, whose six-month rotation is ending within days, said there are two ways to tackle the mission.
"One of course is with more troops and the other way is to pick smaller areas within your overall area, and phase the operation," Lavoie said.
"What has improved significantly is the amount of Afghan National Security forces that we're now able to work with compared to back in August when we first arrived. That's certainly making our job and the jobs of the soldiers a lot easier because now we're conducting operations jointly with both Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police forces."
With files from The Associated Press
