Three children were killed in an explosion in northern Afghanistan, while coalition forces killed several militants and arrested six others in southern region, officials said on Saturday, according to DPA. The children were killed in the Pashtunkot district of Faryab district on Friday, when unexploded ordnance, which was lying on the ground, exploded, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement. However, residents in the district said that the children were killed when ISAF soldiers opened fire at them. They asked the government to arrest and punish the foreign soldiers. Abdul Satar Barez, deputy provincial governor, said that Afghan and ISAF authorities in the province have started an investigation to find out that what caused the death of the children. In southern Helmand province, US-led coalition forces killed several Taliban militants and detained six others during an operation to disrupt insurgents operations in Garmsir district of the province, US military said in a statement. The operation targeted "an extremist cell conducting financing, weapons and foreign fighter operations in the area, the statement said, adding that the combined forces used arms fire and an air strike to eliminate the insurgents. In another incident, four ISAF soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded in a roadside attack in the Sawakai district of eastern Kanur province, Major Martin O'Donnell, an ISAF spokesman in Kabul, said. He said that the wounded soldiers and the Afghan national were evacuated to a military hospital for treatment, where they were reported to be in a stable condition. As part of their campaign to topple the Western-led Afghan government, Taliban militants, who lost power in a US-led invasion in late 2001, have recently relied heavily on suicide and roadside attacks. Both tactics are widely believed to have been copied from Iraqi insurgents.
