More failed Taliban attacks

AP/Houston Chronicle:

A six-hour battle between police and Taliban left 20 suspected militants and two policemen dead in northwestern Afghanistan, a provincial police chief said Sunday.

The militants attacked three separate police posts Saturday in the Murghab district of Badghis province, said provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Ayub Naizyar.

Police repelled the attack and sent reinforcements to the area, forcing the militants to withdraw, Naizyar said. The district is under government control, he said.

After a winter lull, there has been a sharp spike in clashes and other violence this spring in Afghanistan. Some 2,200 people, many of them insurgents, have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on numbers reported by the U.S., NATO, U.N. and Afghan officials.

...

For some reason the wire services conflate all casualties in Afghanistan even though 80 to 90 percent of those casualties are Taliban. They have become an increasingly ineffective groups this year and probably still suffer from the significant losses they incurred last year. They have attempted to change their tactics this year because they are not able to sustain the losses at the rate they did last year. However, the results continue to disappoint them.