NATO Troops Hit Afghan Insurgent Compound

NATO forces struck an insurgent compound in rare violence one province north of Kabul, and fighting continued in the area on Saturday, a NATO official said.

Taliban fighters, meanwhile, attacked a convoy of supply vehicles going to a NATO base, killing two Pakistani drivers on Friday, while nine Taliban insurgents and one Afghan soldier were killed in other violence the last several days, the Ministry of Defense said.

Close air support was used Friday to strike a compound north of Kabul that was holding eight to 10 insurgents, said Maj. Luke Knittig, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. He said he didn't know how many insurgents were killed.

Knittig said the action in the Tagab Valley, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Kabul, was part of a deliberate operation to hunt down Taliban fighters.

Most of the fighting in Afghanistan has been concentrated in the country's south and east, close to the border with Pakistan. Fighting close to Kabul has been rare.

Operation Eagle "is going to address known areas where the Taliban, we suspect, are seeking safe haven," he said. "If that's close to Kabul, then so be it."

A photographer kidnapped in Afghanistan last month returned home to Italy on Saturday, one day after his captors freed him and left him on the side of a road.

Relatives and officials greeted Gabriele Torsello at Rome's Ciampino airport.

"I am well. Thank you, Italy," Torsello said moments after stepping off the plane, clad in traditional Afghan dress and sporting a long, full beard.

Torsello, 36, was kidnapped Oct. 12 while traveling by bus from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, to neighboring Kandahar, said Ettore Francesco Sequi, Italy's ambassador to Afghanistan.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, meanwhile, blamed Pakistan on Saturday for not halting militants from crossing the border and battling NATO and Afghan troops.

"(The) world community including the Netherlands is very serious in exerting pressure on Pakistan to seek that the border is sealed off, that terrorists can no longer cross from Pakistan into ... the south of your country," Bot said during a press conference in Kabul.

The Netherlands this month took command of NATO-led forces in volatile southern Afghanistan.

"If everybody does it and if Pakistan realizes that the world is looking at them, then I am also sure that we can put a halt to it," he said.

Pakistan has denied similar accusations in the past, saying it does all it can to seal the porous border.

A NATO airstrike in Helmand on Thursday killed nine militants and wounded 30 others, the Defense Ministry said. The airstrike was in retaliation for a rocket attack on an Afghan army base, it said. The statement did not explain how officials counted the dead or wounded, nor did it specify where in Helmand province the airstrike hit.

Taliban fighters attacked a convoy of supply vehicles Friday heading to a NATO base in Khost province, killing two Pakistani drivers and wounding an Afghan driver, said Gen. Anan Roufi, Paktia's provincial police chief. The attackers opened fire on the trucks in a mountainous area between Paktia and Khost provinces.

Militants also attacked an Afghan army patrol in the eastern province of Laghman on Thursday, killing one solider and injuring three, the Defense Ministry said.

Militants have been stepping up attacks the last several months around Afghanistan, which has seen its deadliest period of violence since the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001 for hosting Osama bin Laden.

In Helmand province, meanwhile, 10 schools that have been closed the last 10 months for security reasons reopened on Saturday, said Siafulmaluk Noori, the provincial education director. The schools were able to reopen after tribal elders said they would help protect them, he said.

More than 160 schools have been attacked around Afghanistan this year, up from 146 during all of last year.

Most have been nighttime arson attacks that hurt no one — a tactic aimed at undermining the reach of President Hamid Karzai's government, which reversed the fundamentalist Taliban's ban on girls' education. Between 5 million and 6 million children now attend school in Afghanistan, including some 2 million girls.