Afghan battle kills 41 Taliban: governor

By Mirwais Afghan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Forty-one Taliban
fighters and six Afghan policemen were killed in a fierce
battle in southern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said on
Saturday.

There were no foreign casualties in Friday’s battle between
Taliban fighters and Afghan and foreign forces in the Zare
Dasht district of Kandahar province, Kandahar Governor
Assadullah Khalid said.

“Forty-one Taliban were killed in the fighting, mostly as a
result of air bombing. Six policemen, including the Zare Dasht
police chief, were also killed,” Khalid told a news conference
in Kandahar city. A number of Taliban bodies had been
recovered.

Afghanistan has seen a surge in attacks on Afghan and
foreign forces since the Taliban announced last month they had
launched a spring offensive.

Khalid said the fighting, some of the heaviest in weeks,
erupted after foreign and Afghan forces came under attack
during a search operation for Taliban hiding in the area.

He said the foreign forces retaliated by bombing Taliban
positions.

Nine Afghan troops were also wounded in the battle and
Afghan soldiers arrested 13 Taliban guerillas, Khalid added.

But a senior provincial official who declined to be named
said government forces had suffered high casualties as several
bombs mistakenly hit them.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, put Taliban
deaths at only three and said there were “high casualties among
Afghan and foreign forces.”

Four civilians were also killed, residents said.

Friday’s battle comes amid weeks of rising violence by
Taliban, fighting Afghan government and foreign forces since
U.S.-led troops overthrew their Kabul administration in 2001.

U.S.-led forces killed six Taliban in an air strike in
eastern Afghanistan on Friday. A blast elsewhere killed three
policemen, while two British troops from the NATO-led
peacekeeping mission were wounded in a suicide attack in
Helmand.

Despite the increased fighting, the U.S. army plans to cut
its 19,000-strong force in Afghanistan to 16,500 this year.

Thousands of NATO-led troops from Britain, Canada and the
Netherlands are due to deploy in the south where the militants
are mostly active.

U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in Kabul
after its leaders refused to hand over al Qaeda chief Osama bin
Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the United
States.