Artillery fire kills Taliban firing from Pakistan

AP/Houston Chronicle:

...

... 12 Taliban fighters were killed by artillery fire along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border after insurgents attacked a military post with rockets and mortars, the U.S.-led coalition said late Saturday.

Coalition and Afghan troops in eastern Paktika province were attacked by insurgents who used Pakistan's territory to fire rockets and mortar rounds toward a coalition observation post, a coalition statement said.

Pakistani authorities gave permission for the troops to return fire, it said.

"Coalition counter-fire batteries destroyed the six confirmed insurgent firing sites, three on each side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border," the statement said.

...

This is a good development that the AP buried in their story. It is good that the US is using counter battery fire against enemy forces in Pakistan who think they have a sanctuary and it is also good that Pakistan is giving permission for a logical military operation. The rest of the story is something of a mess with the AP conflating all casualties into a meaningless total rather than counting the enemy dead separately which wood give a clearer picture of the defeat the Taliban suffers on a daily basis. In fact, in the total are some KIAs in a friendly fire incident involving British troops. It was a case of close air support getting too close.