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Afghan forces hunt Taliban after heavy clashes

Posted on: Friday, 19 May 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Mirwais Afghan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan police hunted for Taliban insurgents on Friday after two days of bloody clashes and the BBC reported a feared one-legged Taliban commander had been captured.

About 100 people were killed in violence that began on Wednesday. It included a large-scale attack on a town in the southern province of Helmand and two suicide blasts in different parts of the country.

"We are hunting for them all over Mosa Qala district, to capture them or kill them," said Helmand's deputy governor, Amir Mohammad Akhundzada.

Hundreds of Taliban stormed Mosa Qala town on Wednesday evening. The fighting, some of the heaviest since the 2001 overthrow of the hardline Islamists, raged for hours.

Thirteen policemen and about 50 insurgents were killed, Akhundzada said.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan government forces in recent months as thousands more NATO peacekeepers arrive in the country.

The BBC said Mullah Dadullah was captured by international troops in the southern province of Kandahar. Afghan and foreign military officials said they could not confirm the report.

A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said three high-ranking Taliban had been captured this week but he could not confirm one of them was Dadullah.

A Taliban commander, contacted by telephone, said he could not confirm Dadullah had been caught.

A Taliban spokesman, Mohammad Hanif, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press Dadullah had not been captured. Hanif said he had spoken to Dadullah by radio on Friday.

INTENSIFYING INSURGENCY

The U.S. military says the Taliban are intensifying their insurgency to try to sap domestic support for the foreign forces. There will soon be nearly 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, the most since 2001.

Akhundzada said three policemen had been wounded in a clash with Taliban near Mosa Qala town late on Thursday and the Taliban were also believed to have suffered casualties.

But there were no other major incidents, he said.

Violence also flared on Wednesday and Thursday in the southern province of Kandahar, and in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul. Suicide car bombers struck in Ghazni and the usually peaceful city of Herat in the west.

Among the dead found in Ghazni was a provincial-level Taliban commander, said police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang. He identified the commander as Qari Naeem.

At least 25 Taliban were killed and 26 captured in two days of fighting in the southern province of Kandahar. The U.S. military said up to 20 other insurgents might have been killed in an air strike.

Many Afghans blame neighboring Pakistan for the violence and on Thursday President Hamid Karzai repeated accusations that the Taliban were getting support from Pakistan.

Pakistan, which is fighting Taliban and al Qaeda militants on its side of the border, rejected the accusation. Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said he was saddened but would not over-react.

"Why should we be trying to destabilize Afghanistan?" he asked in a speech in the Pakistani parliament. "Afghanistan has a history of problems ... We have a difficult situation here. Let's not lose our cool," he said.

Pakistan was the main backer of the Taliban until the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider in ISLAMABAD)

Source: REUTERS

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