U.S. soldier, 10 Taliban killed in Afghan clashes

KABUL (Reuters) – Taliban fighters killed a U.S. soldier
and wounded another during an ambush in Afghanistan on
Thursday, after the insurgents lost 10 men over the past two
days in clashes elsewhere in the troubled southeast.

Hundreds of people, including 41 U.S. soldiers, have died
in militant-related violence so far this year, making the
run-up to Sept. 18 parliamentary polls the bloodiest period
since 2001.

The latest American casualties belonged to a road-working
detail led by U.S. engineers in Paktika province, where two
days earlier a joint U.S.-Afghan patrol encountered a band of
Taliban fighters close to the border with Pakistan. A U.S.
military statement said the enemy fighters took cover in caves.

Six insurgents were killed and three U.S. soldiers and an
Afghan interpreter wounded in ensuing firefights.

“Afghan and U.S. forces pursued the enemy combatants toward
the cave complex killing one,” it said, adding that several
hours later the same forces came into contact with additional
militants and killed five more.

Four more Taliban fighters had been killed and seven
captured in an assault by Afghan and U.S. forces in neighboring
Zabul province since Wednesday, Bashir Ahmad, a provincial
official said.

There was no immediate comment on the incidents by the
Taliban, but spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the guerrillas
had killed two Afghans in the central province of Uruzgan for
“spying” for the Americans.

Separately, Afghan doctors in a hospital in Zabul said
patients had told them that at least three members of a family
were killed during a U.S. air raid on Monday night.

“We have received six wounded people from the bombing and
they say that three civilians … had died,” Doctor Abdul
Malik, at Qalat hospital in the provincial capital, told
Reuters.

The U.S. military said earlier this week that 17 suspected
Taliban insurgents had been killed in a U.S.-Afghan ground and
air operation in the area, but spokeswoman Lieutenant Cindy
Moore said on Thursday she had no reports of civilian
casualties.

Ousted from power by U.S.-led forces in 2001, the Taliban
and their Islamist allies have stepped up attacks in the south
and southeast this year, having vowed to derail the polls,
topple President Hamid Karzai’s government and drive foreign
forces out of Afghanistan.