Up to 50 Taliban said killed in Afghan fighting

By Mirwais Afghan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – U.S. and Afghan forces
killed up to 50 Taliban fighters in central Afghanistan, a
provincial governor said on Tuesday after the latest burst of
violence in the run-up to September’s crucial elections.

A major Taliban ammunition depot was destroyed in the
fighting late on Monday in Deh Rawud district of Uruzgan
province and 25 Taliban guerrillas were captured, Governor Jan
Mohammad Khan told Reuters.

“We have suffered some losses too, but I do not know how
many,” he said. “Between 40 and 50 Taliban men died in the
fighting and bombing.”

U.S. and government forces have been responding to a surge
in militant violence ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections,
the next big step in the country’s difficult path to stability.

The fighting in Deh Rawud followed a clash in a village in
the same district earlier on Monday in which six Afghan troops
and one American soldier were killed, Khan said.

Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi confirmed the loss of
a major ammunition dump. But he put guerrilla losses at four
and said more than 20 Afghan and U.S. troops died.

A U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul said she had no
information about the latest fighting.

However, the military said on Monday it had killed 11
insurgents west of Deh Rawud town, while one American and one
Afghan soldier were also killed. Another U.S. soldier was
killed in an attack in the southern province of Helmand on
Sunday.

TALIBAN REORGANIZATION

Separately, a district police chief was killed in a Taliban
ambush in neighboring Zabul province overnight, a local
official said, while the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press
quoted police as saying that an election candidate was killed
when his vehicle hit a land mine in the southeastern province
on Paktika.

The violence has followed a call by the Taliban’s fugitive
leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, urging unity in the fight against
the Afghan government and foreign forces.

Taliban spokesman Hakimi said Omar issued the message
recently via field radio to the Taliban’s leadership council
and a recording was made available to Reuters on Monday.

Hakimi said Omar had divided Afghanistan into two war zones
– eastern and southern — to make guerrilla efforts more
effective, and commissions comprising 14 commanders had been
established for each of the two zones.

They would report to a leadership council expanded from 10
to 18 members, the activities of which would be supervised by
two senior commanders, Mullah Brother and Mullah Obaidullah,
who would report to Omar, Hakimi said.

Omar’s whereabouts have remained unknown since U.S.-led
forces overthrew the Taliban for refusing to hand over Osama
bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders responsible for the Sept.
11 attacks on U.S. cities in 2001.

In a written message in March, Omar dismissed U.S. military
claims that he was no longer in control of the insurgency and
vowed to step up attacks on Afghan and U.S. forces.

Hundreds of people have died in insurgent-linked violence
since then, many of them guerrillas but also many government
officials, police officers and soldiers.

The latest U.S. casualties have brought U.S. combat deaths
in Afghanistan this year to 37, making it the bloodiest year
for U.S. forces in the country.

(Additional reporting by Saeed Ali Achakzai in SPIN BOLDAK
and Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL)