Major clash leaves 71 Taliban, 5 Afghan security forces dead

AFGHANISTAN: Afghan and NATO forces battled Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan's volatile south with rockets, artillery and air strikes, killing 71 militants in one of the country's bloodiest clashes in five years.

Five Afghan security forces were also killed in the series of battles, which started late Saturday and spilled into Sunday morning after the Taliban attacked a police convoy in Panjwayi district of southern Kandahar province, said Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, the district government chief.

In neighbouring Helmand province, a separate clash with insurgents on Sunday left one British soldier dead and three others wounded, Britain's defense ministry said.

Militants ambushed another police patrol in western Afghanistan's Farah province, sparking a gunbattle that left one officer and two attackers dead, a regional governor said.

Afghanistan's southern provinces are bearing the brunt of the worst bout of violence since U.S.-led forces toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001. Taliban holdouts and allied extremists have stepped up attacks in a bid to undermine the American-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

In Panjwayi, NATO troops used artillery and aircraft to inflict "heavy casualties against Taliban fighters," an alliance statement said. "It was a sizable engagement," said Maj. Toby Jackman, a NATO force spokesman. He called the clash part of an ongoing operation "to extend security" along the 420-kilometer (260-mile) Kabul-Kandahar highway.

The bodies of 71 slain militants were found in three locations, scattered through orchards alongside their weapons, Sarhadi said.

"The police are still searching for more dead bodies of Taliban," he said.

Four police and one Afghan soldier were also killed in the clashes, officials said. Three police and five soldiers were wounded and three police were missing.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, claimed insurgents killed "scores" of police and damaged 10 of their vehicles before a NATO airstrike left just 12 militants dead and eight wounded.

Ahmadi often contacts journalists to claim attacks for the Taliban, but his exact ties to the militia's leadership are unclear. A British paratrooper was killed in the major drug-producing and insurgent stronghold of Sangin in restive southern Helmand province, the British defense ministry said.

"The soldier died as a result of injuries sustained during the contact. Three other British soldiers received minor injuries," a ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity in accordance with official policy.

In the western Farah province, attackers ambushed a highway police patrol, killing one officer before two attackers were shot dead, said Ghulam Dastagir Azad, the governor of neighboring Nimroz province.

Farah has been relatively untouched by the spiraling violence in bordering southern provinces such as Helmand and Nimroz. But officials have said intense U.S. and NATO-led military operations in the south during recent months have pushed some militants further north into areas like Farah, where they have also started launching low-scale ambushes and bombings.

Kandahar, Monday, AP