KABUL, February 21 (RIA Novosti) - Over 30 Taliban militants have been killed and 12 captured in an army operation in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.
The spokesman said troops of the Afghan National Army clashed with large numbers of insurgents on Wednesday, and the soldiers were forced to call in NATO aviation, which destroyed Taliban positions from the air.
Among those captured was a Taliban field commander. He was delivered to a military hospital with serious injuries, and later died.
The spokesman said that after the enemy positions were captured, two laboratories producing drugs were discovered, containing about half a metric ton of pure heroin.
The Taliban carried out more than 140 suicide missions in Afghanistan last year. More than 6,000 people were killed in violence in the country in 2007, nearly 2,000 of them civilians, according to official sources.
