Twenty-two suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, including three Arabs, were killed in a fierce gun-battle with US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan on Monday. Military spokesman Major Scott Nelson said at a news conference in Kabul that three of the 22 anti-coalition militants killed in the gun-battle that took place at Shinkai in Zabul province were Arabs. He said another three militants, including an Arab, were captured in the fighting, which had continued throughout the night. Nelson said the fighting erupted late on Sunday night after about 40 militants, armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and a global positioning system, attacked US soldiers patrolling in Shinkai district of Zabul province. He said the troops also seized a video camera and several tapes, but declined to disclose their contents. He claimed that no coalition soldiers were hurt in the fighting, which also involved two US Apache gunship helicopters.
In a separate incident, several suspected Taliban militants ambushed a US-led convoy in Kandahar province late on Sunday, but there were no coalition casualties, Nelson said. "It was an attempted ambush. The Taliban engaged our vehicles and we engaged with them. A number of the Taliban might have been killed, I'm not sure," he said.
The Taliban and al-Qaeda attacks had been fuelling instability in Heart, where thousands of sacked governor Ismael Khan's supporters had attacked the UN offices, the offices of NGOs as well as Afghan and US forces. Separately, a Taliban spokesman rejected claims by the US military in Afghanistan that leaders of the ousted militia were seeking truce with the authorities in Kabul, a report said on Monday. "We strongly deny the assertion by US military and consider it just a rumour," a Pakistan-based private Afghan Islamic Press report quoted Hamid Agha as saying in a faxed statement. |