Afghan forces reclaim two districts from Taliban

Security forces retook two remote districts in Afghanistan that had been in control of Taliban rebels for several days, officials said Friday, with at least 10 insurgents killed.
Afghan and Nato-led troops backed by attack helicopters drove insurgents out of the district centre of Gulistan, in the western province of Farah, after several hours of fighting that lasted into early Friday, they said.
"At four in the morning we completely reoccupied the district and the enemies fled into the mountains," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. Operations continued to clear the area of fighters, he said. "Ten Taliban were killed and 20 others have been detained," said Farah police chief, Abdul Rahman Sarjang.
"We have pushed them back from the district centre. But since the district building has been mined by Taliban, we have not moved in," he said. Nato's International Security Assistance Force used attack helicopters in the operation, said Khayer Mohammad Baryalai, an aide to the Farah police chief.
More than 400 Taliban overran Gulistan, halfway between the main cities of Kandahar and Herat, on the night of October 29. They killed seven civilians and a policeman, police said at the time. Days later the rebels stormed into the neighbouring Bakwa district and then Kijran in the southern province of Day Kundi, which fell on November 5. Security forces moved back into Kijran late Thursday with no resistance, provincial governor Sultan Uruzgani told AFP.
However 10 policemen who had gone missing when the rebels attacked had still not been traced, he said. Sarjang, the Farah police chief, said Bakwa was in government control but the local administration had moved to a village outside of the district centre because their offices had been damaged in the fighting.
Taliban insurgents, in government between 1996 and 2001, have been able to drive weak Afghan security forces out of several remote districts in the past but have only held them for short periods.
They have however had control of at least one district in the southern province of Helmand, Musa Qala, since February. The al Qaeda-linked hard-liners were ousted from power in late 2001 in a US-led invasion and have since been waging a bloody insurgency which has claimed the lives of thousands of people, mostly militants.