Taliban militants killed in battles

BETWEEN 40 and 50 suspected Taliban militants have been killed in heavy fighting with Afghan forces backed by US attack helicopters and "tank buster" aircraft near the Pakistan border, the US military said yesterday.

The casualty figure, based on estimates by pilots flying in support of Afghan soldiers in the fighting on Monday, came in a statement from the US-led force of 18,000 troops hunting al-Qaida and Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan. It gave no concrete details for the figure.

If confirmed, it would be one of the heaviest losses in recent months from a single battle for the insurgents fighting foreign and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

A local commander in Khost, near the site of the clashes that erupted in the early hours of Monday, said he knew of two Afghan soldiers and two Taliban guerrillas killed. The US military said 50 insurgents attacked Afghan soldiers using rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.

In a second assault some five hours later, between 20 and 50 militants struck in the same area.

"The exact number of enemy casualties is unknown, but pilots flying overhead estimated that approximately 40-50 insurgents were killed," it said.

Local commander General Khialbaz Sherzai said on Monday his forces saw suspected Taliban militants retreat over the border into Pakistan, many apparently wounded.

Pakistan denies Afghan accusations that its territory is being used as a sanctuary by militants.

Remnants of the Taliban, ousted in a US-led war in 2001, have declared a "jihad" or holy war against foreign forces, Afghan troops, government officials and aid workers.

The Taliban have vowed to disrupt preparations for elections in October and April.

In Iraq, meanwhile, bombers killed three Iraqi national guardsmen, a police chief and one of his officers yesterday.

Also, two American soldiers were killed and two others wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Monday night, while two US Marines died of wounds received in fighting west of Baghdad, the military said.

One of the marines died during the Monday engagement, while the second died yesterday from his wounds in that fighting.

The national guardsmen were killed when a car bomb hit their post north of Baquoba. Four guardsmen were wounded, the US military said.

A truck bomb last Wednesday targeted a police recruiting centre in Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, where hundreds of job applicants were gathered. It killed 70 people.

In today's first bomb attack, an Iraqi police pickup truck was destroyed.

One of the dead was Colonel Mouyad Mohammed Bashar, chief of al-Mamoun police station.

Police in Iraq have repeatedly been targeted by insurgents pressing a campaign to destabilise the interim government. The guerrillas see police as collaborators with American coalition forces.

In northern Iraq, saboteurs bombed an oil pipeline north-east of the town of Beiji yesterday in the latest attack on the nation's infrastructure, the US military said.

Meanwhile, three Palestinians were killed and 17 wounded yesterday by a massive explosion during an Israeli army incursion into the flashpoint southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah.