Kabul: US and Afghan forces attacked a remote village in a mountainous region of northeastern Afghanistan following reports that an infamous insurgent leader was in the area, a governor said today. At least 16 people were killed.

Governor Tamim Nuristani said US-led coalition and Afghan forces believed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was meeting with top deputy Kashmir Khan in the Dohabi district of Nuristan province yesterday, sparking a fierce bombardment.

Other provincial leaders say many civilians were killed in the hours-long clash, which included airstrikes in the remote villages of Shok and Kendal. Nuristani said it was too early to know if any of the 16 killed were civilians. His casualty figures came from police who had reached the remote district.

US officials and the Afghan Defence Ministry have denied that any civilians were killed.

In southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, Taliban fighters attacked and killed seven police eradicating a field of opium poppies in rural Kandahar province, the police chief said. Five militants also died in the clash.

The Afghan Defence Ministry said the battle in Nuristan, a lawless region that borders Pakistan, targeted a terrorist center that included a suicide bomb cell. It said it would release casualty figures later.

Hekmatyar heads the militant group Hezb-i-Islami, which has links with the Taliban and al-Qaida in fighting the Afghan government, though Hekmatyar has denied direct links with those groups.

He briefly served as prime minister of Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and is infamous for bombarding the capital, Kabul, during the country's civil war, killing an untold number of civilians.

Source : PTI