BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, 22 July 2003 — Fugitive Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters have stepped up attacks on US-led forces in Afghanistan this past month, the US military said yesterday as coalition forces hunted extremists after a failed ambush that left up to 24 Taleban dead.

“There has been an increase in attacks, but we also increased attacks against them; they increased, we increased,” US military spokesman Col. Rodney Davis told reporters at Bagram Air Base, 50 kilometers north of the Afghan capital Kabul.

German Lt. Gen. Norbert van Heyst, commander of the separate peacekeeping International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, earlier this month said attacks across Afghanistan doubled between April and May and were still running high. “What the anti-coalition forces have to understand is, if you attack the coalition we will do everything to destroy you,” Davis said in reference to Saturday’s fighting between suspected Taleban and US troops that left two dozen suspected Taleban dead in southeast Afghanistan near the rugged and porous border with Pakistan.

The US Special Operations Forces responded to an attack on their convoy near Spin Boldak in Kandahar province. Five Taleban were killed in the initial attack and as many as 19 more were killed in the surrounding hills by AH-64 Apache helicopters called in to provide air support.

Special Operations Forces and Afghan militiamen on follow-up patrols through the area were attacked Sunday by five gunmen who escaped, he said. Around 40 suspected Taleban were killed in a major battle with pro-government forces near Spin Boldak in June. Kandahar province was the heartland of the Taleban and members of the ousted militia continue to launch attacks on foreign and Afghan forces.

US-led troops and Afghan forces have waged several major operations against Taleban remnants and their Al-Qaeda allies in the mountains of east and southeast over the past two months. There were no reported coalition casualties in the latest attack but around a dozen US-led troops have been wounded over the past 10 days either by hostile fire or in land mine attacks.

Meanwhile, Afghan authorities have seized an edition of a weekly newspaper that published an article calling on President Hamid Karzai to resign after he apologized to Pakistan over an attack on its embassy, officials said yesterday. The article in the Payam-e-Mujahed weekly, owned by the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance faction, accused the president of apologizing to Islamabad under pressure from the United States and called his actions dishonorable.

“One who brawls at night and apologizes the next day after chastisement by the American ambassador and can’t defend the territorial integrity of his country, should kneel before the people and hand back the affairs of government to them,” it said.

Defense Minister Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the military muscle of the Northern Alliance in Karzai’s government, ordered the confiscation of all copies of the paper from news vendors and the its offices, Defense Ministry and newspaper officials said. The article called Karzai a puppet of foreigners who were attempting to weaken the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen fighters, who still wield considerable power.