KABUL (AP)— A NATO airstrike killed a Taliban commander responsible for a suicide attack on a U.S. aid program in northern Afghanistan, police said, while a raid killed another insurgent who smuggled in foreign fighters through Iran, officials said Friday.

International troops working with Afghan forces say they have killed or captured dozens of senior insurgent figures since April as they aggressively step up operations against the Taliban leadership.
In the northern province of Kunduz, a precision airstrike killed a local Taliban commander who uses the alias Qari Latif, the provincial police chief said.
Latif died along with 12 other insurgents while they met in a field under a tree Thursday outside the provincial capital, police chief Abdul Razaq Yaqoubi said.
NATO confirmed an airstrike targeted a senior insurgent commander who was at a meeting to choose a new Taliban “shadow governor” in a Kunduz district, but the alliance said in a statement it was still investigating the outcome.
2 US troops killed by bomb blast
Two U.S. service members were killed in a roadside bombing in restive southern Afghanistan, where thousands of American troops have been deployed to wrest back control of insurgent strongholds.
Also in the south, gunmen kidnapped five Health Ministry employees in volatile Kandahar province while insurgents killed a district official elsewhere, reportedly on the orders of the Taliban supreme leader, officials said Thursday.
Insurgent bombings, gun battles, assassinations and abductions have skyrocketed this year. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of the two American troops were unclear as NATO released no more details.