Afghan soldiers swarmed over remote mountain peaks in an ongoing battle with hardcore Taliban holdouts on Saturday, killing and capturing several enemy fighters, a provincial intelligence chief said on Saturday.
United States fighter planes, meanwhile, launched a second night of withering bombing on the area in the southern Zabul province, where a joint US-Afghan operation has met with stiff resistance, provincial intelligence chief Khalil Hotak said from his command center in Qalat, 70km south of the fighting.
”Our forces are on the tops of the mountains. They have laid siege to the area and the Taliban hideouts,” Hotak said, adding that intense US bombing was called in over the Chinaran mountains and two nearby areas.
About 200 additional Afghan soldiers were called in from a base in the neighbouring province of Kandahar to help in the assault, joining about 500 already on the ground, Hotak said. He said 60 to 70 US soldiers were also on the scene to help direct the Afghan fighters.
Hotak said eight suspected Taliban fighters were captured late on Friday and an unknown number were killed in the fighting. There were no new casualties among Afghan or US troops, he said.
Hotak claimed that 35 Taliban were killed on Thursday and Friday, and the provincial governor said a similar number of enemy troops were killed earlier in the week. It was impossible to independently confirm their accounts.
The US military has refused to comment on the details of the fighting, though it did confirm on Friday that a special operations soldier died in an accidental fall during a nighttime assault, the second American soldier to die in less than two weeks in Afghanistan.
About 11 500 US-led forces are helping Afghan troops in hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, mainly in the south and east of the country.
The area in the Dai Chupan district of Zabul has been the scene of intensifying clashes all week, as insurgents have hunkered down to face the coalition assault.
Hotak on Friday described the area as a Taliban stronghold, from which the insurgents direct their operations into the neighboring provinces of Kandahar, Ghazni and Uruzgan.
Hotak said his forces believe hundreds of Taliban have taken up positions in the area, with at least 15 hideouts, the largest being in a range called Hazar Buz, about 6km from the latest ground fighting.
This week’s fighting follows a surge in military action by the Taliban in recent weeks, staging deadly attacks on Afghan forces, officials and aid workers, in an apparent bid to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai, who took power soon after the Taliban’s ouster by US-led forces in 2001.
Afghan officials say they believe at least two prominent Taliban commanders, Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Shafiq, were leading the fighting in the area. Hotak named a third: Mullah Abdul Qahar, a native of Zabul whom he said was a senior Taliban commander in the province during the Islamic militia’s rule. — Sapa-AP