BAGRAM, Afghanistan, 29 January 2003 — US and coalition forces were battling 80 rebels aligned with renegade leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar yesterday in the largest-scale fighting in Afghanistan in 10 months, the US military said.

At least 18 rebels were killed in the fighting, which began Monday in the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan, the military said. There were no coalition casualties or civilian injuries.

"It’s the largest concentration of enemy forces since Operation Anaconda," US military spokesman Roger King said from Bagram Air Base, referring to a fierce eight-day battle last March against Taleban and Al-Qaeda holdouts in southeastern Afghanistan.

King said up to 350 troops were involved in the fighting on the American side, including troops from the 82nd Airborne division, US Special Forces and allied Afghan militia troops.

Fighters received aerial support from American B-1 bombers, which dropped 19 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs on enemy positions, including deep caves, King said. F-16 fighters flown by unidentified European allies had dropped a pair of 500-pound (225-kg) bombs, while AC-130 gunships and Apache AH-64 helicopter gunships were also pounding the enemy with rocket and cannon fire, King said.

"We’ve had reports of various numbers of armed men, groups of people trying to gather in order to carry out attacks on the coalition," King said. "We’ve been actively engaged in trying to develop intelligence that would lead us to a precise location and yesterday (Monday) we did."

The fighting — about 25 km (15 miles) north of Spinboldak and near the border with Pakistan — was triggered by a small shootout pitting armed attackers against US Special Forces and their Afghan government allies who were working to clear a mud-walled compound.

One of the attackers was killed, one injured and one detained, King said. The detained suspect told questioners that a large group of armed men had massed in mountains nearby, King said. Apache helicopters sent to investigate came under small arms fire, and then fighter aircraft went to pound the area, King said.

"Our intelligence leads us to believe that they are most closely aligned with the Hezb-e-Islami movement, which is Hekmatyar’s military arm," King said. "We’ve had reports over several months that he’s been attempting to consolidate with remnants of Al-Qaeda and Taleban."

Hekmatyar was a key guerrilla commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan. Later, in the civil war that paved the way for the Taleban takeover, Hekmatyar’s men pounded the capital, Kabul, with daily rocket barrages. He lived in exile in Iran during the five years of the Taleban rule, and returned after US-led forces ousted the militia. His following among ethnic Pashtuns is considered fairly significant.

Reports that Hekmatyar was training suicide squads to target American and government forces surfaced in September, when one of Hekmatyar’s military commanders, Salauddin Safi, told the Associated Press that some Taleban had formed an alliance with Hekmatyar’s followers called Lashkar Fedayan-e-Islami, or the Islamic Martyrs Brigade.

King would not speculate on what the guerrillas were planning, but said that the largest contingent of coalition forces were stationed in nearby Spinboldak. "That’s an obvious target," he said.

King said the latest battle might last some time. "It’s a relatively large area. It’s rough terrain. There are some caves, there may be more that we don’t know about, so it could take a considerable period of time," King said. He said fighting was centered on rocky, unpopulated terrain around the Adi Ghar Mountain, which was near the border, so it was possible that fighters of other nationalities were involved. (AP)