Nine killed in gun battle in Afghanistan

KABUL - American and Afghan troops killed nine suspected Islamic militants during a gun battle in the eastern province of Paktika in one of the heaviest clashes reported in recent months, the US military said.

In separate operations, 14 suspected rebels were detained in a US air assault in the east and two senior Taleban commanders were captured by Afghan forces on Friday after an attack on a post near the Pakistan border killed seven government soldiers.

The clash involving US forces yesterday began when they opened fire on a group of 30 to 40 armed men apparently trying to move to the side of their sniper position east of Orgun-E, 170 km south of Kabul, in order to launch an attack.

"They were armed, they were acting in a hostile manner, so we fired on them and then we pursued them with the Afghan National Army," US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Hilferty told a news briefing in Kabul.

"Nine of them were killed in that battle, and there were no coalition casualties."

At least 10 US snipers from a special operations task force in Afghanistan were involved in the battle, supported by a nearby battalion of Afghan troops. The rest of the group of suspected guerrillas fled.

The clash was one of the largest reported in recent months between 13,000 US-led troops in Afghanistan and their local allies and Islamic militants from groups including the ousted Taleban militia and al Qaeda.

Remnants of the Taleban have declared a "jihad," or holy war, on foreign forces and their Afghan allies and aid organisations which has seriously undermined security and stability, especially in the south and east.

MILITANTS HELD

In a separate incident a day earlier, 14 suspected militants were captured at a compound north of the eastern town of Khost.

Troops from the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment launched an air assault and found 100 mortar rounds, 100 rocket propelled grenades, rifles and other ammunition at the compound.

"We had intelligence that led us to a compound north of Khost," Hilferty said, declining to comment further on the nature of the intelligence. The 14 suspects are being questioned.

In Spin Boldak, a town on the Afghan-Pakistan border in the southern province of Kandahar, commander General Fati Khan said two senior Taleban commanders had been caught by local forces.

Khan identified the commanders as Mullah Naeem and Mullah Abdul Rahim. They were arrested along with 40 other militant suspects in an operation to hunt down the assailants involved in Thursday's attack on a checkpoint in which seven soldiers died.

The US military and its Afghan allies are hunting al Qaeda and Taleban fighters mainly in the south and east of Afghanistan.

American forces have shifted away from large-scale operations to deploying smaller outfits into rural areas where they spend several days in each location to build relations with locals and improve intelligence gathering.

The prime targets are Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, Taleban supreme commander Mullah Mohammad Omar and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

- REUTERS