75 Taliban Killed Today - Two Week Death Toll Reaches 300
By Pat Dollard on terror
A "Good" Taliban
KABUL (AFP) - Days of intense fighting continued in Afghanistan Wednesday 75 more Taliban reported dead, including in new battles in an area where Taliban seized a group of South Koreans.
The new tolls take the number of rebels killed in just over a week to more than 300, according to an AFP count based on US military reports.
There was meanwhile a second night of fighting in the central province of Ghazni, where the Taliban freed last week 19 South Korean Christian aid workers they had captured six weeks earlier. About 16 rebels, including a commander involved in the kidnappings, were killed in a first night of clashes in Ghazni on Tuesday, police said.
The US military said several Taliban terrorists were killed. Ghazni province police chief Alishah Ahamdzai said around 30 Taliban fighters had died in fighting in two districts of the restive province.
A terrorist spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, confirmed the casualties but said all the dead were civilians. The Taliban often falsely report civilian casualties.
The Taliban themselves are responsible for killing about 260 civilians this year, security officials said in Kabul Wednesday.
The hardliners shot dead two of their 23 Korean hostages in July and released two in mid-August before freeing the remainder after striking a deal with Seoul.
Police and the coalition told AFP the latest operations in Ghazni were routine and not in retaliation for the kidnappings.
The coalition also reported two new battles Tuesday in Kandahar province that erupted after rebels ambushed two separate military patrols. More than two dozen rebel fighters were killed, it said.
The area, called Shah Wali Kot, is one of the flashpoints in the Taliban's intensifying insurgency. The coalition said Wednesday more than 150 Taliban had been killed there in the past nine days.
Security forces are pushing into more areas and therefore encountering more insurgents, coalition spokesman Major Chris Belcher told AFP.
"As Afghan national security forces increase the number of patrols, of course they are going to meet the Taliban more often," he said.
In another incident Taliban fighters attacked Afghan and foreign soldiers at a checkpost in the southern province of Helmand late Tuesday, an Afghan army general said.
The soldiers fought back, calling in air support. "Twenty-five Taliban were killed," General Mohyiddin Ghori told AFP.
The fighting was in Sangin, another major flashpoint and a hub of the Afghanistan's three billion dollars-a-year opium trade that is said to finance some of the insurgency.
Also in Helmand, two policemen were killed early Wednesday when a Taliban-style bomb struck their vehicle, a district chief told AFP.
The Taliban were removed from government in late 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda and they are trying to take back power.
The government of President Hamid Karzai relies on international soldiers and aid to fight back the rebellion and start rebuilding a country devastated by nearly three decades of war. |
