33 Taliban Killed in Week of Afghan Raids

Afghan soldiers swarmed over remote mountain peaks in an ongoing battle with Taliban holdouts Saturday, killing and capturing several enemy fighters, a provincial intelligence chief said.

The U.S. military confirmed that at least 33 insurgents had been killed in fighting with coalition and Afghan militia forces in or near the southern province of Zabul since Monday and two U.S. soldiers had been wounded in the area.

On Friday, a special operations soldier died in a fall during a nighttime assault, the second American soldier to die in less than two weeks in Afghanistan.

U.S. planes, meanwhile, launched a second night of bombing on the area, where a joint U.S.-Afghan operation has met with stiff resistance, provincial intelligence chief Khalil Hotak told The Associated Press from his command center in Qalat, 45 miles south of the fighting.

“Our forces are on the tops of the mountains. They have laid siege to the area and the Taliban hideouts,” Hotak said, adding that intense U.S. bombing was called in over the Chinaran mountains and two nearby areas.

About 200 additional Afghan soldiers were called in from a base in the neighboring province of Kandahar to help in the assault, joining about 500 already on the ground, Hotak said. He said 60 to 70 U.S. soldiers were also on the scene to help direct the Afghan fighters.

Hotak said eight suspected Taliban fighters were captured late Friday and an unknown number were killed in the fighting. There were no new casualties among Afghan or U.S. troops, he said.

Hotak claimed that 35 Taliban were killed on Thursday and Friday, and the provincial governor said a similar number of insurgents were killed earlier in the week.

Col. Rodney Davis, spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, told reporters Saturday that at least 33 insurgents had been killed between Monday and Wednesday, but he had no casualty figures for more recent days.

Davis also said that two U.S. soldiers had been shot in the shoulder during combat over the past three days in Zabul, but their condition was not serious.

Some 11,500 U.S.-led forces are helping Afghan troops in hunting down Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, mainly in the south and east of the country.

The area in the Dai Chupan district of Zabul has been the scene of intensifying clashes all week as insurgents have hunkered down to face the coalition assault.

Hotak on Friday described the area as a Taliban stronghold, from which the insurgents direct their operations into the neighboring provinces of Kandahar, Ghazni and Uruzgan.

Hotak said his forces believe hundreds of Taliban have taken up positions in the area. He said there were at least 15 Taliban hideouts, the largest in a range called Hazar Buz, about four miles from the latest ground fighting.

This week’s fighting follows a surge in military action by the Taliban in recent weeks. They have staged deadly attacks on Afghan forces, officials and aid workers in an apparent bid to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai, who took power soon after the Taliban’s ouster by U.S.-led forces in 2001.

Afghan officials said they believe at least two prominent Taliban commanders, Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Shafiq, were leading the fighting in the area. Hotak named a third: Mullah Abdul Qahar, a native of Zabul who he said was a senior Taliban commander in the province during the Islamic militia’s rule.