Taliban attack town, 53 dead
Thursday, May 18, 2006 Posted: 0610 GMT (1410 HKT)
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- Taliban insurgents launched a major attack on a town in the southern Afghan province of Helmand and 13 policemen and 40 Taliban were killed in nine hours of fighting, the government has said.
In a separate incident, a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of foreign troops in the western city of Herat, killing himself and one foreign soldier, police said.
The Taliban attacked the southern town, Mosa Qala, on Wednesday evening and the fighting went on until early on Thursday, government officials said.
"Thirteen policemen were killed and six were injured," the Interior Ministry said.
"Forty people on the enemy side were killed," a ministry official said, citing a statement from spokesman Yousuf Stanizai.
Helmand's deputy governor, Amir Mohammad Akhundzada, said it was the biggest attack in the province since the end of Taliban rule in 2001. Hundreds of Taliban were involved, he said.
British troops are in charge of security in the province but no foreign soldiers were involved in the battle, he and the Interior Ministry said.
In Herat, the provincial police chief said the foreign soldier who was killed in the Thursday suicide blast was an American, but Afghan police and officials at times mistake the nationality of foreign troops.
An Afghan soldier and interpreter were wounded, he said. A Taliban commander claimed responsibility.
The U.S. military was checking the report, a spokeswoman said.
Canadian killed
The Taliban focused their attack on Mosa Qala on provincial government offices and police stations and many shops in the town's market caught fire during the battle, Akhundzada said.
The Taliban have stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan government forces in recent months. The violence in parts of the country is the worst it has been since the hardline Islamists were driven from power in late 2001.
Mosa Qala, 470 km (300 miles) southwest of the capital, Kabul, is about 40 km (25 miles) north of the province's Sangin district, the scene of frequent clashes between Taliban and foreign and Afghan government forces.
A Taliban commander, speaking by telephone, said 30 policemen had been killed in the battle.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency Taliban fighters had captured the town but later withdrew.
The recent surge in violence comes as NATO members are sending reinforcements to boost their peacekeeping force from 9,000 to 16,000.
With about 23,000 troops, the United States now has its largest force in Afghanistan since its military involvement began in October 2001.
Foreign military commanders say the Taliban are trying to inflict casualties on their forces to sap domestic support for the deployments.
A Canadian woman soldier was killed in neighboring Kandahar province on Wednesday evening, hours before Canada's parliament narrowly backed a two-year extension of Canada's Afghan mission to February 2009.
Thirty-one foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, 23 of them Americans. In all, more than 500 people, many of them militants, have been killed in violence this year.
The Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 after refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
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