Taleban Driven From Area They Captured
Agencies
KABUL, 24 August 2003 — An Afghan official said yesterday government troops had recaptured parts of a district in the central province of Uruzgan overrun by hundreds of Taleban guerrillas this week.
But the official in Khas Uruzgan district said 250 to 300 Taleban fighters were still holding parts of the area.
“As far as we know, the Taleban were driven out of several sections of the district, including its headquarters where they had put their flag,” the official, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters.
“They are still out there and we are chasing them and some low-level clashes happen here and there occasionally.”
He said several Taleban fighters and two government soldiers were killed in a counterattack on Friday to retake the district.
Jan Mohammad Khan, governor of Uruzgan, told Reuters on Friday that two Afghan soldiers and four Taleban guerrillas were killed in the clash.
Nine guerrillas were captured along with what he called “important documents”, assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket launchers and ammunition, he said.
The clash in the area is the latest in a string of attacks blamed on the Taleban that have claimed dozens of lives in the last two weeks in various parts of the country. Some recent attacks have involved hundreds of guerrillas instead of much smaller groups as in the past.
The raids have been some of the bloodiest since the fall of the Taleban in late 2001, although officials and foreign aid workers say some fighting attributed to the fundamentalist group is really local feuding between rival Afghan factions.
Even so, remnants of the hard-line regime appear to be stepping up violence across Afghanistan despite the presence of a 12,500-strong US-led coalition hunting both them and fighters of the Al-Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Afghanistan says many Taleban guerrillas are crossing from Pakistan, and has accused Islamabad of not doing enough to stop their resurgence. Pakistan, once the main backer of the Taleban before it joined the US-led “war on terror”, denies sheltering the guerrillas.
Agencies
KABUL, 24 August 2003 — An Afghan official said yesterday government troops had recaptured parts of a district in the central province of Uruzgan overrun by hundreds of Taleban guerrillas this week.
But the official in Khas Uruzgan district said 250 to 300 Taleban fighters were still holding parts of the area.
“As far as we know, the Taleban were driven out of several sections of the district, including its headquarters where they had put their flag,” the official, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters.
“They are still out there and we are chasing them and some low-level clashes happen here and there occasionally.”
He said several Taleban fighters and two government soldiers were killed in a counterattack on Friday to retake the district.
Jan Mohammad Khan, governor of Uruzgan, told Reuters on Friday that two Afghan soldiers and four Taleban guerrillas were killed in the clash.
Nine guerrillas were captured along with what he called “important documents”, assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket launchers and ammunition, he said.
The clash in the area is the latest in a string of attacks blamed on the Taleban that have claimed dozens of lives in the last two weeks in various parts of the country. Some recent attacks have involved hundreds of guerrillas instead of much smaller groups as in the past.
The raids have been some of the bloodiest since the fall of the Taleban in late 2001, although officials and foreign aid workers say some fighting attributed to the fundamentalist group is really local feuding between rival Afghan factions.
Even so, remnants of the hard-line regime appear to be stepping up violence across Afghanistan despite the presence of a 12,500-strong US-led coalition hunting both them and fighters of the Al-Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Afghanistan says many Taleban guerrillas are crossing from Pakistan, and has accused Islamabad of not doing enough to stop their resurgence. Pakistan, once the main backer of the Taleban before it joined the US-led “war on terror”, denies sheltering the guerrillas.
posted by Casey Britton | 8:06 PM
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