50 Taliban Killed in Afghanistan Associated Press | May 22, 2006KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - U.S.-led coalition forces killed about 50 suspected Taliban militants in an airstrike on a rebel stronghold in southern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the force said Monday. Residents claimed dozens of civilians were killed.
The attack late Sunday and early Monday was on the village of Azizi in Kandahar province, said a coalition spokesman, Maj. Scott Lundy. "It was against a known Taliban stronghold and we believe it resulted in about 50 Taliban killed," he said.
Lundy said the coalition was investigating whether some civilians may also have been hit by the bombing.
The new deaths brought the toll of militants, Afghan forces and coalition soldiers killed to more than 240 since Wednesday, when a storm of violence broke out in the south. The fighting is among the deadliest since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 and comes despite the presence of more than 30,000 foreign troops.
More than a dozen villagers, many of them wounded, fled the area to the main southern city of Kandahar early Monday. At the city's Mirwaise Hospital, one man with blood smeared over his clothes and turban, said insurgents had been hiding in an Islamic religious school in the village after fierce fighting in recent days.
"Helicopters bombed the madrassa and some of the Taliban ran from there and into people's homes. Then those homes were bombed," said Haji Ikhlaf, 40. "I saw 35 to 40 dead Taliban and around 50 dead or wounded civilians."
Another survivor from the village, Zurmina Bibi, who was cradling her wounded 8-month-old baby, said about 10 people were killed in her home, including three or four children. "There were dead people everywhere," she said, crying.
A doctor, Haji Mohammed Khan, said he had treated 10 people from the village.
It was not possible for reporters to reach Azizi because police and foreign troops had blocked off the area, which is about 30 miles southwest of Kandahar.
Militants have detonated three car bombs around Afghanistan since Wednesday. The latest one exploded Sunday on a busy road that links several bases belonging to the U.S.-led coalition and a separate NATO-led peacekeeping force. Three civilians died, but no coalition forces.
The Taliban resurgence has halted postwar reconstruction work in many areas and raised fears for this country's future.
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said Sunday that rebel commanders were coordinating attacks inside Afghanistan from Pakistan.
"The leadership of the Taliban and other terror groups are living in Pakistan," he told a news conference. "The movement and the communication during these terrorist attacks is from the other side" of the frontier, he said.
Afghan-Pakistan relations soured earlier this year amid Kabul's accusations that Pakistan was doing too little to stop Taliban and al-Qaida militants hiding on its side of the border from crossing into Afghanistan.
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a long border where Afghan and U.S. officials say elements of the ousted Taliban regime are hiding. Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden is also believed to be hiding in the mountainous region.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
