Two US Marines and up to 23 militants were killed in a clash in eastern Afghanistan amid an upsurge in violence by suspected Taleban rebels which has claimed more than 100 lives in the past week. The deaths occurred after a group of Marines hunting militants clashed Sunday with about 25 rebels north-west of the eastern city of Jalalabad, the US military said Monday. "Two insurgents were confirmed killed and another 21 suspected dead after a five-hour gun battle in the Laghman province Sunday," a US military statement said.
"US Air Force A-10 aircraft engaged the insurgents in the cave and a squad of Marines went afterwards to assess the situation," the statement added. Their names were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
Remnants of the ousted Taleban regime have launched an increasingly bloody spring offensive against US-led coalition troops and Afghan government forces following the end of the harshest winter in nearly a decade.
The coalition earlier said the Marines had intelligence that insurgents were in the region and were hunting for them. With the latest casualties, 25 US soldiers have been killed on active service in Afghanistan this year, including 15 who died in a helicopter crash on April 6 in southern Ghazni province.
More than 18,000 US-led troops are in Afghanistan hunting militants along with the fledgling national army, mostly in the south and south-east which were former strongholds of the Taleban and where they still find support.
Violence has spiralled in those regions since Afghanistan's harshest winter in a decade ended and allowed poorly equipped Taleban militants to mount new, near-daily attacks. In the capital Kabul, three people including a Myanmar engineer working for the United Nations were killed and six were wounded Saturday evening in a suspected suicide bombing of an Internet cafe.
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