Roundup: Conflict, rocket attacks kills 2, wounds 16 in N. Afghanistan

Gun battle and rocket attacks have killed two people and injured 16 others, including six civilians, in the northern Baghlan province on Monday, police said.

The clash flared up at 5:00 a.m. local time (0030 GMT) after a group of Taliban militants raided police checkpoints in Dand-e- Ghori district, triggering a gun battle and leaving casualties on both sides.

"A group of armed Taliban composed of scores of fighters raided police checkpoints in Dand-e-Ghori area and police returned fire. As the result of the fighting, two armed militants have been killed and 10 others, including nine militants and a police constable, sustained injuries," provincial police chief Abdul Jabar Purduli told Xinhua.

In another attack also in the troubled Baghlan province, six civilians were injured after militants fired two rockets towards Pul-e-Khumri city, capital of northern Afghan province of Baghlan, on Monday morning, police said.

"Two rockets fired by militants landed on two different residential areas. The first blast caused by the rocket injuring two women and four children," a security official who delined to be named told Xinhua.

The second rocket slammed near the provincial police station but caused no casualties. The type of the rockets was short-range BM-1, which often used by the Taliban militant group, according to the source.

The injured were shifted to hospital where two children remained in critical condition, the official added.

Earlier, another security official said two children were injured after a rocket hit residential area in Dand-e-Ghori district on Monday morning.

Civilians often bear the brunt of war in Afghanistan as more than 970 Afghans were killed and about 1,960 others wounded in the conflicts and Taliban-led insurgency in the first four months of 2015, which showed a 16-percent increase over the same period last year, according to official figures released by the UN mission in the war-ravaged country. Endi