KANDAHAR: Three suspected Taliban fighters were killed and two wounded in a gun fight which also left five policemen injured in violence-torn southern Afghanistan, a police official said yesterday.
The fighting erupted late on Tuesday in the Shah Joy district of Zabul province, on a main highway between the capital Kabul and the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province, local police commander Qauoom Jan said.
“Three Taliban were killed, two were wounded,” Jan said. “They took away their dead and wounded Taliban. We had five of our men wounded.”
Purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi, calling AFP from an unknown location, said 45 insurgents had initiated the hour-long gunfight and added that none of their fighters was killed and only one was wounded.
“Only one of our mujahedin (Islamic holy warriors) was wounded,” he said.
Taliban loyalists have stepped up their attacks on US and government forces in recent months after a winter lull in fighting and ahead of scheduled September parliamentary elections.
On Tuesday, US and Afghan troops killed dozens of militants in an attack on an insurgent hideout in neighbouring Uruzgan province, according to provincial officials.
Two Afghan soldiers were also killed in the attack, in which American and Afghan troops and national police launched a three-pronged raid on a Taliban base in the Deh Rawood district.
About 18,000 coalition troops are in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants following the 2001 US-led invasion that toppled the Islamic fundamentalist regime for sheltering Al Qaeda after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Meanwhile, the US military has handed over a group of Afghans detained this week to local police after angry protests outside its main base, police said yesterday.
About 2,000 Afghans protested outside the US base at Bagram north of Kabul on Tuesday to demand the release of locals who the US military said were arrested in an anti-insurgent operation.
It was the biggest protest against the US since 16 people were killed and scores injured in May following a Newsweek magazine article - later retracted - that US guards at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba desecrated the Holy Qur’an.
The US military said on Tuesday six suspects had been captured in a raid by US and Afghan forces, after earlier saying eight men had been detained.
The suspects were seized along with improvised bombs of the sort used by Taliban and allied Islamist insurgents.
Provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkhel said the six men had been handed over to his men’s custody, and the Americans had promised not to search houses without government approval.
“The Americans handed them to us yesterday evening and apologised for arresting them,” Sayedkhel told Reuters. “The development comes because of the protests and anger shown by people during the demonstrations.”
The US military, in a news briefing, confirmed the handovers, without explaining why they were made.
Sayedkhel said the suspects, who included former factional commander Engineer Hamidullah, would be questioned and either punished or freed.
Tuesday’s protesters had been demanding the release of three men they said were detained when US troops entered a house in Bagram village without permission.
They chanted anti-US slogans, threw stones at US military vehicles and banged on the main gate of the base. US soldiers fired shots in the air after their vehicles were stoned, but there were no reports of casualties.
The US military has been criticised by Afghans in the past for heavy-handed methods when hunting militants, but open protests against the US presence have been rare. – Agencies |
