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

Posted on: Thursday, 11 August 2005, 07:32 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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