Agence France-Presse,
ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan: Afghan and NATO troops backed by helicopter gunships launched a massive “clean-up” operation Wednesday to drive Taliban militants from villages near Kandahar, leaving 23 rebels and two soldiers dead.
The huge offensive came as Britain announced the deaths elsewhere of four soldiers, reportedly including the country's first female casualty in Afghanistan, underscoring fears that the Taliban are making a major resurgence.
Clashes broke out and helicopters swooped low overhead as Canadian armoured vehicles pushed into the southern district of Arghandab, considered by the militants as a major prize in their increasingly bloody insurgency.
Hundreds of Taliban swarmed into Arghandab late Monday and blew up bridges and laid landmines, just days after a mass jailbreak from nearby Kandahar's main prison that embarrassed the government of President Hamid Karzai.
A Taliban spokesman told AFP the militia wanted to capture the district in order to launch attacks on Kandahar itself — the southern city where the Taliban first rose to power in the 1990s.
An AFP reporter saw Canadian troops driving armoured vehicles through Arghandab, a lush area surrounded by pomegranate orchards, while two helicopters swooped very low overhead and dropped flares.
Sporadic gunfire could be heard from nearby villages.
Afghan defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the “clean-up operation started in Arghandab district” at 8:00 am (0330 GMT).
A defence ministry statement said that a group of Taliban was “targeted by NATO air force” in Ta-been village in Arghandab, killing 20 “local and foreign terrorists”, while three more rebels were shot dead in Arghandab.
Two soldiers were also killed in the operation, the ministry said.
General Carlos Branco, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed that military helicopters had “engaged” the rebels but said no fixed-wing aircraft had dropped bombs.
NATO's civilian spokesman in Kabul, Mark Laity, said the operation was “proceeding satisfactorily”.
“We still had only minor contacts. We've inflicted casualties on the insurgents during these exchanges,” Laity told AFP, adding that the number of Afghan and Canadian troops involved was “substantial”.
A self-styled Taliban commander called Mullah Sayed Ahmad, claiming to be calling from Arghandab, told AFP that there had been “very heavy fighting going on and the NATO helicopters also fired machine guns into our positions.”
Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi vowed fierce resistance.
“We will use Arghandab for specific attacks with motors and cannons on targets in Kandahar city. We have also planned a suicide attack which will be carried out in Kandahar,” he told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
The operation has forced around 1,500 families to leave their homes and leave behind crops that were ready for harvest, said Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of Kandahar provincial council and a brother of President Karzai.
“I evacuated my family three days ago and stayed with my belongings and my animals. But today the fighting started and there are groups of 70 to 80 Taliban taking up positions,” said local resident Mir Ahmad.
Meanwhile Taliban spokesman Ahmadi claimed responsibility for a bomb blast in neighbouring Helmand province on Tuesday that the defence ministry in London said killed four British troops, including one from the Intelligence Corps.
A total of 106 British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan.
Despite the presence of about 70,000 international troops from some 40 countries mainly operating under NATO, an insurgency aimed at toppling the US-backed government in Kabul has gained pace in the past two years.
Friday's jailbreak happened the day after Karzai won billions of dollars in pledges of aid at a donors' conference in Paris, but with a warning that he had to improve the security situation.
Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Monday that the real front of the “war on terror” was Afghanistan and that the US involvement in Iraq had been a diplomatic and financial disaster.
