Afghan soldiers die in suspected Taliban ambush

SUSPECTED Taliban fighters attacked a government checkpoint and ambushed another group of Afghan soldiers along the main road linking the south with the capital, killing at least eight soldiers, Afghan officials said yesterday.

The attacks came a day after two US soldiers were killed in a 90-minute gunbattle with insurgents in eastern Paktika province, near the border with Pakistan. Four suspected Taliban were killed in that fighting.

Guerrillas from the former radical Taliban regime recently have appeared to regroup, launching bolder attacks against Afghan government targets. Four American soldiers have been killed during fighting in less than two weeks.

The attacks on the Afghan soldiers, both near the southern Zabul province mountain range that has been the site of a week of fierce skirmishes, appeared to be an attempt by the insurgents to distract government forces from the main battle, said Khalil Hotak, the provincial intelligence chief.

A large group of rebels attacked an Afghan checkpoint late Sunday in Shajoi several miles from the main fighting and about 20 miles northeast of Qalat killing four soldiers and taking the remaining two soldiers captive, Hotak said. And early yesterday, suspected insurgents rode up to another group of Afghan soldiers protecting the Kabul-Kandahar road in Shajoi, killing four soldiers and setting their vehicle ablaze, Hotak said. "They are trying to distract us from the fighting," he added, speaking to reporters The Associated Press from a command centre in Qalat.

"They want to spread our forces out."

Meanwhile, a provincial religious leader, Mulvi Abdul Rahman, said told AP that he had spoken to tribal elders in the area and asked them to pass along an offer on behalf of the Zabul governor to the Taliban: "Lay down your weapons and we will allow you to return home."

Rahman said he had not received a response, but that negotiations to end the battle peacefully where ongoing.

"Both sides the present government and the Taliban are all Afghans. We are all the same people and we have been fighting for 23 years," he said.

"Now, I would rather we negotiate rather than fight, so these (Taliban) fighters can go home and help rebuild Afghanistan."

Up in the mountains, American warplanes have been pounding Taliban positions and Afghan and US troops have been pushing across gorges and ravines in an effort to smash the Taliban hideouts, killing dozens of suspected insurgents in one of the fiercest battles since the fall of the hardline regime.

General Haji Saifullah Khan, the main Afghan commander in the area, said by satellite phone that intelligence from an informer indicated Taliban reinforcement fighters had arrived in the area, in the Dai Chupan district of Zabul.

"We have information that more than 250 Taliban entered Dai Chupan district from the neighbouring district of Mizan," he said.