U.S. kills 15-20 militants in Afghan air strikes
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-20 09:40

The U.S. military said it killed 15-20 militants with air strikes in southern Afghanistan on Sunday after a joint patrol of U.S. and Afghan troops came under attack in the latest in a wave of violence to rock the country.

The strikes in Helmand province came as Taliban guerrillas said they had executed a district police chief and seven other men from among 31 people they were holding prisoner in the neighboring province of Kandahar.

Earlier on Sunday, three rockets hit the key southern city of Kandahar. One seriously wounded two children while another landed near a U.S. base but caused no casualties.

A US CH-47 Chinook helicopter flies in Charikar north of Kabul. United States warplanes killed 15 to 20 suspected Taliban rebels in southern Afghanistan in the latest attack in a renewed wave of violence to hit the country, the US military said.[AFP/File]

The violence was part of a surge of activity by the Taliban and allied militants in recent months in which hundreds have died, raising fears for the security of parliamentary elections due to be held on Sept. 18.

A U.S. military statement said the air strikes were launched after a patrol reported being pinned down by small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire northwest of Helmand's Giriskh district, which is about 550 km (330 miles) southwest of Kabul.

"U.S. aircraft and attack helicopters engaged the enemy," a U.S. military statement said. "Initial battle-damage assessments indicate 15 to 20 enemies died and an enemy vehicle was destroyed."

U.S. military spokesman Colonel Jim Yonts said the patrol was made up of both U.S. and Afghan troops. The statement said the U.S.-led force suffered no casualties.

Hundreds of guerrillas and members of the Afghan security forces have died in fighting this year. Twenty-nine U.S. soldiers from a 20,000-strong U.S-led foreign force hunting the insurgents have also died since March, 18 of them in a helicopter crash.

Authorities in Kandahar, the province worst-hit by recent violence, meanwhile faced a fresh crisis.

POLICEMEN KILLED

Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said district police chief Nanai Khan, the most senior of 30 policemen captured by the Taliban in attacks on Thursday and Friday on Mian Nishin district, had been shot dead on Sunday morning.

Another seven of those being held prisoner at Mian Nishin's main government building were executed later in the day on the orders of Taliban religious leaders, Hakimi said. He did not say whether those killed included a district chief captured at the same time.

Afghan officials said they were not immediately able to confirm the Taliban claim.

In separate violence in Helmand province on Friday night, guerrillas killed a judge, an intelligence official and a guard in the district of Anad-i-Ali to the west of the provincial capital Lashkargah, a provincial spokesman said.

One of the rockets that hit Kandahar overnight landed near the former home of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, which is now used as a U.S. base, deputy police chief Salim Khan said, adding that it caused no casualties. Another landed near a school, also causing no casualties, but a third hit a house, seriously wounding the two children, he said.

Khan said a Taliban supporter, Mullah Toar Jan, had been arrested from a district outside the city for carrying out the attack, but another suspect had escaped. He said Jan was caught with six other rockets.

U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 after they refused to hand over al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

More than 3 1/2 years on, bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar remain at large and militant activity has picked up significantly after a lull that allowed for peaceful presidential elections in October, won by Western-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai.

That lull came after Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, stepped up security along its frontier with Afghanistan to prevent cross-border movement by militants.

Afghan officials say Pakistan has made a similar pledge to protect the parliamentary polls, but on Friday the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad questioned Pakistan's commitment to combating the Taliban.

Pakistan was the main supporter of the Taliban government overthrown in 2001.

Khalilzad, the next U.S. envoy to Iraq, said there was a good chance Mullah Omar was hiding in Pakistan and accused Islamabad of failing to act against fugitive Taliban leaders -- charges Pakistan called "irresponsible."

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