A district in Afghanistan's restive east was in danger of falling into Taliban hands after pitched gunbattles with insurgents killed at least eight police, a senior official said on Wednesday. The fighting erupted late on Tuesday in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nuristan bordering Pakistan, where authorities are also battling a growing Taliban insurgency.
-- Two more foreign troops killed, supply convoy torched
-- Marines commander sees 'Iwo Jima moment" in the south
Violence has flared across Afghanistan after US Marines launched a major new offensive in the southern Taliban stronghold of Helmand last week. The police were killed when insurgents attacked government buildings in Nuristan's Barg Matal district late on Tuesday.
Another eight police were kidnapped during gunbattles lasting several hours, Nuristan's governor Jamaluddin Badr said. "The district headquarters is with the government, but if we do not get reinforcements it will fall to the Taliban," Badr told a Reuters reporter in eastern Afghanistan by telephone. Officials said 21 Taliban fighters were killed in the battle.
The Taliban said on a website that they had surrounded the building. They said only four of their fighters had been killed. The Defence Ministry in Kabul said an additional 130 soldiers and police would be sent to Barg Matal to counter the Taliban attack. Fighting had subsided, officials said late on Wednesday.
The US Marines launched the Helmand offensive, Operation Strike of the Sword, with violence at its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 for refusing to hand over al Qaeda leaders behind the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Helmand is the source of most of Afghanistan's opium crop, the world's largest, which finances the insurgency. The Marines are the biggest wave of 17,000 new combat troops US President Barack Obama has ordered into Afghanistan by year-end as part of his new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, Marines commander Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson and senior Afghan officials attended a flag-raising in Khan Neshin, long under Taliban control. "This is the Iwo Jima moment," Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson told Reuters in Khan Neshin, referring to the famous World War Two battle US Marines fought against Japan.
The Taliban have grown in strength in recent months, with their insurgency spreading out of traditional strongholds in the south and east to the relatively more peaceful north and even to Kabul's outskirts. Afghan civilians and soldiers as well as foreign troops have died in attacks across the country in the past five days.
More than 16 foreign soldiers, most from the United States and Britain, have been killed in the past five days, making it one of the bloodiest weeks for foreign troops for many months. Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said on Wednesday that Afghan and foreign troops had killed 27 Taliban fighters since the Helmand operation began last Thursday but there had been no major battles so far.
In northern Kunduz province, Taliban insurgents torched 12 trucks belonging to a construction firm overnight and abducted two of their drivers, the provincial governor said. On Monday, four US soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in Kunduz. The Ministry of Defence in London said a British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb near Gereshk, Helmand's main industrial city, on Tuesday. At least six British soldiers have been killed in the past week. Another foreign soldier was killed in the south on Tuesday, the alliance said. No other details were available.
One of the main goals of the new operation is to capture ground from the Taliban and then hold it, something overstitched British-led Nato troops have so far been unable to achieve. It is also seeking to win over Afghans from the insurgency. In eastern Ghazni province, an Afghan woman was killed by a ricocheting bullet as Nato-led and US forces searched three compounds for members of the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network.