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Battles Across Southern Afghanistan Kill up to 105    [

    Afghanistan Sees Violence Upsurge
    BBC News

    Thursday 18 May 2006

Up to 100 people have died in some of Afghanistan's fiercest fighting since US-led forces ousted the Taleban regime in 2001.

    Taleban fighters are battling police in Helmand province where officials say about 50 militants and 13 police died.

    Coalition and Afghan troops have conducted more operations in Kandahar and say at least seven militants died.

    A US national was killed by a suicide bomber on Thursday in Herat, where such attacks are rare, while another bomber blew himself up in the city of Ghazni.

    The Ghazni blast happened at an Afghan army base as a US military convoy was passing. The bomber and a civilian were killed.

    This came shortly after an attacker rammed a bomb-filled vehicle into a convoy in Herat, killing himself and a civilian American contractor.

    So far this year there have been at least 20 suicide attacks compared with 17 for the whole of 2005 and five in 2004.

    Biggest Attack

    The fighting in Helmand began on Wednesday when Taleban forces stormed the town of Musa Qala.

    At least 13 Afghan policemen were killed, along with about 50 Taleban fighters, officials said.

    "It was the biggest attack [in Helmand] since the fall of the Taleban," provincial governor Amir Mohammad Akhundzada told Reuters news agency.

    Fighting was continuing on Thursday in the village of Sar Besha, about 20km (12 miles) north of the town, a spokesman for Helmand's governor told the BBC.

    He said coalition forces were providing air support to chase away the militants.

    'Ungoverned Space'

    The Taleban have stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan forces as the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force expands to help the Afghan government with security and reconstruction.

    Isaf currently has about 9,000 personnel but plans to build up to about 21,000 troops by November.

    Nato spokesman in Afghanistan Mark Laity told the BBC that resistance to the deployment was only to be expected.

    "Although the Americans have done a brilliant job down there, a lot of Helmand, Kandahar...all these areas in the south, are effectively ungoverned space," he said.

    The aim was to move forces in to really take control of the territory later this year, he said.

    "Now that is really bad news for people like the Taleban, al-Qaeda, criminals, narcotics traffickers and so on. So they are going to resist."

    Britain, which is in charge of security in Helmand, has hundreds of soldiers there and the full complement of 3,300 will be deployed by June.

    UK troops were not involved in the Helmand clashes.

    Intense Debate

    The continuing violence comes a day after the Canadian parliament narrowly voted to extend Canada's military mission to Afghanistan by two years until 2009.

    Canada currently has 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan, mainly in the south where the Taleban-led resistance is strong.

    The Afghan government welcomed Canada's decision, saying it benefited the Afghan people and the rest of the world.

    "We hope the international community, as they've shown in the past, stay committed with us until Afghanistan stands on its own feet," a presidential spokesman told the AFP news agency.

    But the parliamentary debate in Ottawa was intensified amid news that a woman soldier, Capt Nichola Goddard, had been killed in an operation near Kandahar. She was the first female Canadian soldier to die in combat since World War II.

    Canadian forces said 18 Taleban members had been killed and 26 captured in the fighting.

    A further operation in Kandahar against insurgents was carried out on Thursday, the US-led coalition said.

    "Seven members of the Taleban were killed with approximately 15 to 20 more possibly dead from an associated air strike. One coalition member was wounded," a coalition statement said.

    Go to Original

    Battles Across Southern Afghanistan Kill up to 105
    By Noor Khan
    The Canadian Press

    Thursday 18 May 2006

    Kandahar, Afghanistan - Some of the fiercest fighting since the Taliban's ouster in 2001 have erupted across southern Afghanistan, with militants battling coalition forces, detonating car bombs and attacking a small village. Up to 105 people were killed, officials said Thursday.

    The upsurge in violence occurred this week in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where 9,000 NATO-led forces are scheduled to deploy this summer to suppress the stubborn insurgency.

    The Taliban death toll from fighting Wednesday night and Thursday ranged up to 87, U.S. and Afghan officials said. Also, 14 Afghan police officers, one American civilian, a female Canadian soldier and an Afghan civilian were also killed, the officials said.

    In one attack, several hundred militants assaulted a police and government headquarters at Musa Qala district in Helmand, 150 kilometres northwest of Kandahar, said deputy Gov. Amir Mohammed Akhunzaba.

    The assault marked an escalation in the campaign by supporters of the ousted Taliban regime to undermine the internationally-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

    The eight-hour battle killed about a dozen police and wounded five, Akhunzaba said. The interior police said up to 40 militants may have been killed, though police said they retrieved only 14 bodies.

    In another battle in Kandahar province, Canadian artillery officer Capt. Nichola Goddard and 18 Taliban militants were killed Wednesday, said Maj. Scott Lundy, a Canadian military spokesman. Three Afghan soldiers were wounded and some 35 militants were detained, he said.

    Canadian soldiers supported Afghan police and soldiers who came under attack by militants in Panjwai district west of Kandahar. Goddard was killed in action about 24 kilometres west of Kandahar, Canadian officials said. U.S. and British forces provided air support, bombing Taliban positions as the ground battle raged.

    Goddard was Canada's first female soldier killed in a frontline combat role. Her death came as Canada's Parliament narrowly voted late Wednesday to extend Canada's military mission in Afghanistan by two years, until February 2009. Canada has about 2,200 troops in Afghanistan, most of them operating in the Kandahar region.

    In western Afghanistan, a suicide car bomber rammed into two vehicles, killing an American and wounding two others, officials said. A second suicide car bombing south of Kabul killed a civilian.

    The American killed in the suicide attack was working under a State Department contract, training police as part of a project to fight the country's booming illicit trade in opium and heroin, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Chris Harris.

    The nationalities of the two wounded were not immediately known, said Ghulam Sarwar Haydari, deputy police chief of Herat, where the attack occurred about 640 kilometres west of Kabul.

    The second suicide car bombing occurred near the gates of an Afghan army base in the town of Ghazni, about 110 kilometres south of Kabul, said Sher Alam, the provincial spokesman. A civilian passing in a motorbike was killed, and a bystander was wounded.

    Violence has been rising recently in southern Afghanistan, with militants launching increasingly bold attacks and suicide bombings. On Sunday, five police officers and 11 militants were killed in another fierce battle in Panjwai.

    The surge in violence comes as NATO prepares to take over security operations from the U.S.-led coalition, which has been hunting for Taliban and al-Qaida militants in the region since late 2001, following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States by al-Qaida suicide bombers.

    Troops from countries including Canada, Britain and the Netherlands are stepping up their operations in the south, a Taliban stronghold where the Kabul government's influence had been tenuous in many areas.