NATO said Thursday its forces killed scores of insurgents who had crossed from Pakistan in the biggest battle of the Afghan winter, while Pakistan's army fired artillery at trucks supplying militants on the other side of the border. NATO tracked the suspected Taliban militants through air surveillance while the fighters were still in Pakistan. Once they crossed the frontier, NATO and Afghan soldiers attacked the two separate groups with ground fire and airstrikes during a nine-hour battle that began Wednesday evening.Gen. Murad Ali, the Afghan army regional deputy corps commander, said the insurgents traveled into Afghanistan's southern Paktika province with several trucks of ammunition. Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, a U.S. military spokesman, said it was likely they were going to carry out an immediate attack, given the size of the groups.
The overnight offensive in Paktika province was the first major engagement of 2007 and appeared to be the largest battle since a multi-day operation killed more than 500 Taliban fighters in southern Kandahar province in September.
Fitzpatrick said 130 fighters were killed or wounded in the attack, down from NATO's initial estimate of as many as 150 dead. The Afghan Defense Ministry put the death toll at 80. It was not clear why there was such a disparity in the estimates. As is common in Afghanistan, independent confirmation of the death toll at the remote battle site was not immediately possible. Fitzpatrick said commanders lowered the estimate after further evaluating reports from observers made at night in difficult conditions. In early December, NATO said it had killed 70-80 fighters in Helmand province, but days later said only seven or eight had died.
Dr. Muhammad Hanif, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said in a text message to an Associated Press reporter in Pakistan that the initial NATO figure was "a complete lie." "The Americans want to boost morale of their troops while making such claims," the message read.
The Pakistani military has several checkpoints in the area where the insurgents crossed the border with Afghanistan. Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said the army attack on the militants' trucks Wednesday night shows the army can act swiftly and effectively if it is given "real-time" intelligence. "We don't deny that some people are coming from this side. That's why we seek intelligence in real time. We are keen to stop it," he said.
It was the Pakistani army's first reported offensive in the North Waziristan tribal region since a September peace deal between the government and pro-Taliban militants that critics say has provided a sanctuary for insurgents. The peace deal in North Waziristan, which lies opposite Afghanistan's Paktika province, ended fighting between militants and the army. But U.S. and NATO military officials have voiced concern that cross-border attacks into Afghanistan have escalated since the truce, and pro-Taliban elements have gained more power.
In Afghanistan's Helmand province on Thursday, NATO airstrikes on a suspected Taliban compound killed 16 suspected militants and 13 people being held by the Taliban, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail. An unknown number of civilians in a nearby home were also wounded. Also in Kandahar province, thousands of mainly ethnic-Pashtun tribesmen threw stones at a Pakistani border post and chanted "Death to Pakistan's links to the Taliban" during a rally to condemn new border measures. The protest was held in the town of Waish, across from the Pakistani town of Chaman near where Pakistan opened its first biometrics system to screen travelers - a step aimed at stopping the cross-border movement of militants. Pakistan has also announced plans to build a fence and plant land mines at selected places along the border, a proposal opposed by Afghanistan.