Drone strikes kill 16 in Afghanistan

KABUL, Jan 12 : The United States military said Tuesday it had killed 16 insurgents in two air strikes using “unmanned aerial vehicles,” or drones, which are highly unusual in Afghanistan and more frequently associated with attacks on militants in neighboring Pakistan .

The United States military said Tuesday it had killed 16 insurgents in two air strikes using “unmanned aerial vehicles” or drones, which are highly unusual in Afghanistan and more frequently associated with attacks on militants in neighboring Pakistan .

In a statement, the American command in Kabul said the attacks began early Monday with a strike on an alleged safe house at Now Zad in Helmand Province , one of the most contested areas in the growing battle between the American-led coalition and Taliban insurgents. The attack killed 13 militants, the statement said. A second operation in the Nad Ali district of Helmand killed three insurgents, the command said.

On both occasions, the drones fired Hellfire anti-tank missiles. It was not immediately clear if the use of drones signaled a significant tactical shift in the campaign against the Taliban after a year of soaring allied casualties.

The drone attacks came on the same day as allied forces reported six soldiers killed on Monday, including three Americans, reinforcing assessments that the once-traditional winter lull in the fighting has been overtaken by the spreading conflict.

Witnesses in Helmand Province said the people killed in the drone attacks seemed to be insurgents. In the past, Afghan leaders and coalition commanders have expressed concerns about civilian casualties from conventional air strikes and their use has been restricted in recent months.

Drone strikes are relatively frequent in Pakistan where a program run by the Central Intelligence Agency uses remotely-piloted Predators to strike at insurgents in the lawless tribal regions along the mountainous border with Afghanistan . In Afghanistan , by contrast, a program run by the military uses Predator and the larger Reaper drones, but instances of their use are extremely rare.

In 2002, The C.I.A. used a missile fired from a surveillance drone in an attempt to kill Gulbadin Hekmatyar , outside of Kabul . He survived the attack. Last December, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan , said Mr. Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party draws support from “external elements” in Iran and Pakistan , has ties with Al Qaeda, and coexists with narcotics and criminal networks, both fueling and feeding off instability. Until Monday, there had been very few known drone attacks in the widening war.