Combined Afghan, Canadian and other troops backed by gunship helicopters killed or wounded about 100 Taliban in raids on a stronghold in southern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday.
The operation, launched Saturday in Kandahar province, also cost the lives of two Canadian troops and their interpreter, as well as an Afghan soldier, in deaths that have already been announced.
"Our information from the area says that 100 Taliban have been killed and wounded," Kandahar police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb told AFP.
"Twenty-five Taliban have been buried in one location." The Nato-led soldiers used gunship helicopters in the fighting in the Zahri district, 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Kandahar city, Saqeb said.
The battle pushed into the night and on Sunday troops were searching the area, he added. The police chief had no breakdown for his toll, which could not be checked independently. Figures are hard to pin down in Afghanistan with officials and rebels sometimes exaggerating the casualties of their adversaries.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said its forces were involved but could not confirm the police toll.
However, a Canadian military spokeswoman, Captain Catherine Larose, said two Canadian men killed in a bomb blast Saturday with their interpreter were among the troops involved.
Dozens of Afghan and international troops moved into action in Zhari after Taliban attacks in the same area Friday killed two newly married women and a child and, separately, four policemen.
Yousuf Ahmadi, the chief spokesman for the insurgent Taliban movement, said only four Taliban had been killed but dozens of soldiers and civilians had died in the fighting.
Ahmadi also reported heavy civilian casualties in fighting Thursday in neighbouring Helmand province, which the US military said killed 23 rebels.
Helmand province commander Mohammad Hussain Andiwal acknowledged there had been some civilian casualties, including women and children, but it was not clear how many.
A delegation from the area was due to meet provincial authorities Sunday to update them on the situation, he said. Taliban, meanwhile, attacked Afghan security forces on the main road between Kandahar city and Kabul overnight, sparking fighting that killed 11 rebels and wounded four Afghan soldiers, Zabul province police commander Mohammad Qasem said.
Militants separately attacked police on the same road closer to Kabul, in which two policemen and three rebels were killed, Ghazni police said.
The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were toppled by an international coalition for harbouring al Qaeda. Their insurgency, now gaining pace, is stretching into a sixth year.
Critics say the war in Iraq has diverted world attention from Afghanistan, allowing the rebels to regroup. In another in a stream of attacks, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an ISAF vehicle in Helmand's Gereshk area, Andiwal said.
There were no other casualties, and ISAF could not immediately confirm the attack. Separately, a bomb near Gereshk bazaar Saturday killed a civilian, Andiwal said.
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