Eleven people, including security personnel, have been killed in various attacks in Afghanistan's southern province, while Helmand officials say the airstrikes will investigate the deaths.
The attacks in southern Afghanistan come at a time when the Afghan government's negotiating team is in Qatar for talks with the Taliban, aimed at ending the long civil war, according to the AP.
A member of the provincial council, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a suicide car bomb had exploded near a military base in the southern province of Uruzgan, killing six soldiers.
Muhammad Karim Karimi, deputy head of the provincial council in Uruzgan, confirmed that the military base had been attacked in the provincial capital, Tirinkot, but declined to give a final death toll.
Another operation in Afghanistan's Helmand Province killed five people and injured five others.
Attaullah Afghan, head of the provincial council, said an airstrike on the outskirts of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah last night had killed and injured several people.
Provincial Governor Abdul Nabi Elham said authorities were determining whether the deaths were caused by airstrikes or the nature of the attack.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the two attacks in Afghanistan's southern provinces.
It is believed that a delegation from the Afghan government has arrived in Qatar to start talks with the Taliban to resolve the decades-long civil war across the country.
Inter-Afghan talks between the Taliban and the government are resuming after a hiatus, while concerns are being raised about the Taliban-US agreement following the failure of Donald Trump's US presidential election.
Attacks on security forces in Afghanistan have intensified over the past year, with talks between the Taliban and the government beginning in September 2020.
Bismillah Adil, a journalist killed in the western province on January 3 after the start of the new year, was the fifth Afghan journalist to be killed in two months, while the Taliban denied involvement in the attack.
One week earlier, Rehmatullah, head of the journalists' union in Ghazni Province, was killed in an attack by gunmen outside his home.
A bomb attack on the car of four doctors working in a prison full of thousands of Taliban prisoners in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on December 22, 2020, killed five people, including doctors.
Police spokesman Firdous Faramarz said the bomb had been planted in a doctors' car.
A day before the incident, Mehboobullah Mohibi, deputy governor of Kabul province, was killed in a similar attack.
