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| Afghanistan |
| Four Taliban Fighters Zapped, Two Bagged |
| 2003-01-09 |
| At least four suspected members of the deposed Taliban militia were killed and two others captured after a gun battle in southeastern Afghanistan with soldiers from the nation's new army, a government official said Thursday. The soldiers confronted about 60 fighters during a routine patrol on Monday in the area of Balai Zhar, about 75 miles southeast of Kandahar, said Khalid Pashtoon, a top government spokesman in Kandahar. The Afghan soldiers suffered no casualties, Pashtoon said. High fives all around He said the fighters were led by Hafiz Abdul Rahim, well-known in the area for his promotion of the Taliban. Rahim and the remaining fighters fled into the hills east of Balai Zhar near the Pakistani border, he said. Bet he didn't stop running till he crossed the border Pashtoon would not say how the fighters were identified as Taliban nor where the captured men were being held. "Hafiz Abdul Rahim had been in the area before to promote the Taliban," Pashtoon said. Kandahar was the stronghold of the Taliban, the rigorously Islamic regime that was ousted from power in late 2001 by a U.S.-led military coalition. Bala Gul, an Afghan trader based in the border town of Spinboldak, near Balai Zhar, said Rahim and his men would come to the area regularly. They called on people to launch a jihad, or holy war, against the current Afghan government and pasted pamphlets with similar messages on mosques in the area, Gul said. "Pops up, rants a while, tags our mosque with graffiti, then splits. We're getting tired of him." |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Actually, it's not like they have better things to do...they don't know HOW to do anything besides being thugs. Only one way to rehab them: send them to the 72 virgins. And it's very good news that the Afghans are developing a real, national army. Training takes time, but eventually they'll be far superior fighters to these Taliban bozos. |
| Posted by: Ramon McLeod 2003-01-10 04:41:17 |
| #2 The good part about this story is that it's the Afghan army that bumped these hosers off. I've been saying from the beginning, it's their country, they should be able to take care of this stuff. This'll be a nice dose of self-confidence for them, so there should be more Bad Guy corpses to come. |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-01-09 20:42:44 |
| #1 All this calling for jihad gets old really quick. It's as if these Neanderthals don't have anything else better to do. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-01-09 19:54:05 |