At least 40 Taliban militants were killed when national troops cleared the rebels from a district in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, the governor's office said Thursday. "In a three-day operation all those areas under the control of insurgents were completely cleared in the district Wednesday and 40 insurgents were killed," it said in a statement. Afghan forces were erecting security checkpoints in the cleared areas, the statement said.

Copyright Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 2013