Dealing a major blow to Taliban forces, US and Afghan troops killed dozens of militants in an attack on an insurgent hideout in south-central Afghanistan, a local official said on Tuesday.
Coalition forces had killed 40 to 50 enemy fighters in the Uruzgan province raid, said Governor Jan Mohammed Khan, although it was unclear whether this included 11 insurgent deaths from a clash in the area the previous day.
Two Afghan soldiers were also killed in the attack, in which American and Afghan troops and national police launched a three-pronged raid on a Taliban base in the Deh Rawood district, said Khan.
"In this operation between 40 to 50 Taliban were killed, two Afghan soldiers were killed and we have arrested more than 25 people since the beginning of the operation," he said.
The attack, confirmed by US military and Taliban sources, followed a nearby battle the previous day that claimed the lives of one US and one Afghan soldier as well as 11 insurgents.
The Taliban base "was supplying weapons and men for Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan [provinces]", said Khan, who added that "we found a big number of weapons, even heavy weapons".
The three provinces form part of a swathe of southern Afghanistan where Taliban insurgents have stepped up raids on US and Afghan government targets in recent months and hundreds of people have died.
US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O'Hara on Tuesday confirmed that an operation was ongoing.
"There was fighting throughout the night and we are still doing pursuit operations," he said. "This was a sizable amount of enemy forces that we came into contact with and dealt a decisive blow to."
Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdel Latif Hakimi admitted that the raid had destroyed the local base of the militia, which has waged a guerrilla campaign since being ousted by US-led forces in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
"Our main and most important base in Uruzgan was totally destroyed by a US bombardment last night," he said, although he disputed Khan's death toll. "Four Taliban brothers were martyred and also 28 Afghan police, army and soldiers were killed or wounded in the area," he said. "The rest of the mujahideen brothers managed to flee to the mountains."
The latest clash came amid a wave of violence ahead of September parliamentary elections.
It followed an apparent call by fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar on supporters to unite and fight Afghan and foreign troops, made in an unverified audiotape address to insurgents released on Monday.
In other attacks officials said that militants killed a parliamentary candidate in the southeastern province of Paktika, the third killed ahead of the polls, and two police officers in Kandahar in clashes for which the Taliban spokesman did not claim responsibility.
More than 800 people have been killed in political violence in Afghanistan this year, almost level with the 850 who were killed in the whole of 2004.
Tensions also ran high near the capital on Tuesday where hundreds of villagers protested against the US forces outside their Bagram Air Base military headquarters, a former Soviet installation.
Anger was sparked by overnight US raids on local homes, in which the US military said that it had arrested eight suspected militants with bomb-making material who had planned attacks against them.
A candidate in Afghanistan's upcoming parliamentary elections was killed and his mother wounded in a bomb attack by suspected Taliban militants on Tuesday. Azatullah Khan was traveling with his mother to the Paktika provincial capital of Sharana when their car was hit by a remote-controlled roadside bomb, said Paktika deputy police chief Malik Khan. "This is the work of the Taliban," he said. The attack came less than a week after an Afghan electoral worker was killed and his son wounded in Yahya Kheil district of the same province.
US-Afghan forces kill dozens of Taliban
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