DHAKA: At least 18 militants were killed in a gun battle in a mountainous district of Afghanistan near Pakistan.

Police said on Thursday, they were killed in the latest fighting in the region since a Taliban massacre of school children in the nearby city of Peshawar late last year, reports the Dawn.

The operation was in rugged Nangarhar province, where Osama bin Laden once had a base in the Tora Bora cave network and which has been the focus of air strikes in recent months.

Since the Peshawar attack in December, Afghan forces have stepped up operations against a Pakistani division of the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the school killings and has bases in Afghanistan.

Azrat Hussain Mashriqiwal, a spokesman for Nangarhar’s police chief, said 26 militants were injured and four captured, including three Pakistani citizens and a Afghan policeman in the fighting that ended on Wednesday.

During the operation Afghan forces seized a cache of weapons and explosives from the insurgents, Mashriqiwal said.

BDST: 1120 HRS, FEB 06, 2015