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NATO-led and Afghan forces have unleashed air and ground strikes on a group of insurgents spotted infiltrating into Afghanistan from Pakistan, killing up to 150 of them, officials said.
The men were seen gathering on the Pakistan side of the border and crossing into the eastern province of Paktika in two large groups, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Thursday.
They were “monitored, tracked and subsequently engaged in Afghanistan, through the coordinated use of both air and ground fire in a series of engagements”, it said in a statement.
Afghan defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP that NATO bombed the insurgents just two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the Pakistan border in Barmal district. Afghan ground forces also attacked, he said.
“Initial battle damage estimates indicate as many as 150 insurgents were killed,” ISAF's statement said.
The Afghan defence ministry put the toll at around 80. One man was arrested and a large number of guns and ammunition confiscated, a ministry statement said.
Parts of enemy bodies littered the scene of the attack and a trail of blood could be seen going towards the border, it said, adding there was no injury to Afghan forces.
ISAF said Pakistani military liaison officers were kept fully informed throughout the operation.
Purported Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif however denied that the movement's fighters were involved and claimed the dead were all civilians.
The strikes came as Afghan, Pakistani and ISAF commanders met in Islamabad to coordinate efforts against insurgents fighting for the hardline Islamist Taliban movement driven from power in Kabul in late 2001.
The insurgent death toll is one of the highest in a strike in the nearly five-year campaign against the Taliban and their allies, including Al-Qaeda.
ISAF headquarters in the Afghan capital Kabul said the force had a “variety of means” with which it observed movements across the border.
“These people were observed, they gathered, they moved across the border clearly intent on conducting an attack somewhere in Afghanistan,” Major Ian Clooney told AFP.
“The attacks from our side used a mixture of ground fire and air-delivered weaponry,” including bombs, he said.
In a separate incident, police in the southern province of Helmand, where thousands of British troops are based, said nine Taliban militants were killed in an operation by Afghan and NATO troops on Wednesday in the Girishk district.
The border strike was ordered amid a row between Afghan and Pakistani officials about the movements across the border of Taliban-linked militants waging the insurgency.
The rebel campaign was launched months after the Taliban regime was driven from power in a US-led operation after it refused to surrender Al-Qaeda allies blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Last year was the deadliest in Afghanistan since then. Around 4,000 people, mostly rebels, were killed in 2006 in insurgency-linked violence, according to officials.
Human Rights Watch has said about 1,000 civilians were also killed.
After complaints from Kabul that it was not doing enough to stop fighters crossing over from bases and training camps in Pakistan, Islamabad has proposed fencing and mining parts of the porous 2,500-kilometres (1,500-mile) frontier.
Afghanistan has strongly criticised the proposal, saying Pakistan would do better to address the root causes of extremism.
Communities living along the border have held demonstrations against the plan, while the United Nations and Canada have also expressed concern.
