Pat Dollard | Young Americans

KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) — NATO warplanes killed 15 militants after rebels attacked a government building in Afghanistan Tuesday, officials said, while an Afghan policewoman was killed in the first attack of its kind.

The violence added to the toll in one of the bloodiest months so far in an insurgency launched by the ultra-Islamist Taliban movement after its ouster from government by US-led forces in 2001.

Several foreign militants were among the dead after the airstrike by the NAT0-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the eastern province of Paktia, near the troubled border with Pakistan, officials said.

Insurgents opened fire on the headquarters of the province’s Sayed Karam district but were driven away after a gunbattle which caused slight damage to the building, provincial government spokesman Rohullah Samoon said.

“NATO helicopters then bombed the militants and killed 14 militants on the spot. Our policemen arrested another four wounded, and one of the wounded also died in hospital,” Samoon told AFP.

The injured rebels were from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, he said.

“The three arrested terrorists have told police that most of the 15 Taliban killed in the air strike were Pakistani nationals and some of them from Arab countries,” he said.

NATO’s press office for eastern Afghanistan said an unmanned aerial vehicle “positively identified” more than a dozen militants after they clashed with Afghan police and that close air support killed “several” rebels.

The attack came a day after the separate US-led coalition said airstrikes and clashes had killed 55 militants who ambushed a patrol in eastern Afghanistan.

Eastern Afghanistan borders Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions, where Afghan and Western officials say the militants have “safe havens” which they use to launch cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.