About 100 militants were killed in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, half in air strikes that thwarted a major attack on a key town overnight, Afghan and British forces said on Sunday.
The attempt to enter Lashkar Gah from three directions was ”virtually unprecedented” in the area in the scale of the attacking force and their degree of coordination, British military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Woody Page said.
It came as the head of the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, United States General David McKiernan, again called for more troops and equipment to tackle a fierce insurgency led by the Taliban, who were driven from government in 2001.
Between 50 and 60 militants, part of a group of 150 that had been seen massing outside of the town for several days, were killed in air strikes that stopped them from entering Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, Afghan and British forces said.
About 40 more were killed in a three-day operation in the nearby Nad Ali district that wound up on Saturday, they said.
It was impossible to verify independently the tolls from the battles in Helmand, Afghanistan’s main opium-producing province and a stronghold of the Taliban, whom officials say are linked to other extremists and drugs traders.
”We knew they were massing outside of the city,” Page said. ”The operation that was launched last night was deliberately launched to defeat them outside Lashkar Gah.”
He said about 50 of the attackers were killed, while a spokesperson for the Helmand government, Daud Ahmadi, put the death toll at 62.
”Last night they attacked from three directions … to divide and keep our forces busy,” Ahmadi said. ”The joint forces of Nato, Afghan army and police fought them.”
Groups of dead bodies had been left at various places, he said. ”Our information suggests that 62 Taliban were killed. This figure might rise even higher,” he said.
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), under which the British forces serve, said a ”major insurgent attack” had been thwarted.
Helmand, Afghanistan’s largest province, has seen some of the worst of the insurgency launched after the Taliban were able to regroup following their ouster from government in a US-led invasion in late 2001.
Officials admit that large parts of the province are not under the control of authorities and the British military has lost several soldiers in its efforts to extend the government’s authority.
The ferocity of the Taliban fightback in the years since they were removed for sheltering al-Qaeda after the September 11 2001 attacks on the US has caused alarm, with many military commanders calling for more troops.
McKiernan repeated the call at a media briefing in Kabul on Sunday but rejected the defeatism expressed by some of Afghanistan’s international partners in recent days.
”We are not losing in Afghanistan,” said the four-star US general, who commands Isaf and the separate US-led coalition. ”The insurgency will not win in this country. The vast majority of people who live here do not want the Taliban,” he added.
But the general said he needed more troops and military gear, including helicopters, to speed up the war against insurgents. ”We have insufficient security forces to adequately provide for the security of the people of Afghanistan,” he said.
Besides soldiers, there were needs ”such as helicopters, such as ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], such as logistics and transportation, civil affairs or other capabilities”, the general added.
Insurgency-linked violence killed 3 800 people in the first seven months of this year, with one-third of the dead civilians, according to the United Nations. — Sapa-AFP