- KABUL (Reuters) - Nine Afghan
soldiers and policemen have been killed in Taliban guerrilla attacks, officials
said Monday, while the U.S. military announced a new assault to wipe out
hundreds of militants in a restive southern province.
-
- Four policemen in Zabul province who were guarding a
highway being rebuilt between the capital and the southern city of Kandahar
were killed in a rebel attack late Sunday, the province's intelligence
chief, Khalil Hotak, told Reuters.
-
- Three policemen were killed while sleeping at a checkpoint
in the Tazir Abad area on the same road, he said.
-
- "The attackers were certainly Taliban. They took
with them two policemen in charge of security for the road and a car,"
he said.
-
- Two Afghan soldiers and three Taliban fighters were killed
in a clash in the neighboring province of Uruzgan late on Sunday, officials
said.
-
- The U.S. military, leading a 12,500-strong international
force hunting remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda network it sheltered,
announced a fresh operation against the largest concentration of Taliban
fighters since the regime's ouster late in 2001.
-
- Dubbed "Operation Mountain Viper," U.S. spokesman
Colonel Rodney Davis said it began Saturday in the Dai Chopan district
of Zabul, where U.S. warplanes and helicopter gunships have been pounding
militant positions.
-
- He told reporters at Bagram, the U.S. headquarters in
Afghanistan north of Kabul, that U.S. soldiers and special operations forces
backed by aircraft would be deployed to help Afghan troops hunt up to 1,000
Taliban.
-
- "Operation Mountain Viper will continue for some
time. We do not have a specific end date," Davis said.
-
- The week-long battle in Zabul made August the bloodiest
month since the Taliban was toppled from power by U.S. air power and Afghan
ground forces.
-
- By attacking the Kabul-Kandahar road, guerrillas are
threatening the largest reconstruction project in the country, which has
seen past attacks on Afghan deminers and other workers.
-
- Hotak said Afghan and U.S. forces were conducting searches
for Taliban fighters in various parts of Dai Chopan Monday after a brief
lull in the fighting.
-
- He said the Zabul government was planning to send a delegation
headed by local tribal chief Abdul Rahman Hotak to persuade residents in
Dai Chopan not to give shelter to the Taliban.
-
- Afghan officials and commanders say more than 90 Taliban
fighters have been killed, most of them in air raids, while the Taliban
say its losses are far lower. The U.S. military has reported at least 37
Taliban losses in the Zabul fighting.
-
- Two U.S. soldiers were killed and one wounded Sunday
when they came under fire near a base in Shkin, in the eastern Paktika
province. Another died of wounds last week sustained in an accident during
Zabul operations, and two more have been wounded in clashes in Zabul and
Uruzgan.
-
- Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited
without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable
for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.
- Copyright © 2003 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
|
