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Taliban capture Afghan district
31/05/2006 11:18 - (SA)
Kandahar - Hundreds of Taliban rebels overran a district in southern Afghanistan, driving out government forces and remaining in control overnight, police said on Wednesday.
The insurgents stormed Chora district of restive Uruzgan province late on Tuesday and took over the police command and district headquarters after a battle lasting several hours, provincial police chief Haji Rozi Khan told AFP.
"They had control over the headquarters overnight but they left in the morning," Khan said. "The centre of the district is no man's land now, we are preparing to go back as soon as we get reinforcements," he said.
Afghanistan has recently seen a spike in violence as fighters of the extremist Taliban movement forced from government in late 2001 have stepped up their attacks, mainly in the south and southeast.
Kabul calm
In separate attacks, Taliban guerrillas have killed at
least a dozen Afghan police and abducted up to 40 others in the south of the country, officials said on
Wednesday.
In the southern province of Zabul, a senior police
official, Mohammad Rasoul, was killed and four other people,
including two senior provincial officials, were wounded after
the Taliban hit their car with a rocket on Tuesday night.
"They were part of a reinforcement sent to help a group of
highway police who had come under Taliban attack on a road of
Zabul," Yousuf Stanizai, the Interior Ministry spokesperson, said.
An official in Zabul who declined to be identified said
more than 10 policemen were killed in the Taliban assault.
Meanwhile, the capital Kabul was calm on Wednesday morning
following anti-US riots two days earlier, in which seven
Afghans were killed. The riots were sparked by the crash of a
US military vehicle which killed five civilians.
A night curfew has been in operation in the city, and
Afghan troops were patrolling the streets.
The violence in Zabul and Uruzgan comes amid a series of
operations by US-led coalition forces in the south in the
past two weeks.
About 350 people have been killed, many of them in air
strikes. Most of those killed were militants, but the toll also
includes dozens of police, at least 17 civilians and four
foreign troops.
It is the bloodiest period in the insurgency since
coalition troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 for
refusing to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban and their Islamist allies are mostly active in
the southern and eastern areas. - AFP/Reuters
- News24
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