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Up to 50 Taliban said killed in Afghan fighting
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 September 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 REORGANISATION Separately, a district police chief was killed in a Taliban ambush in neighbouring 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 landmine 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 September 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 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.
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