KABUL, 17 February 2004 — US troops in Afghanistan have captured more than 40 people, including two Taleban leaders, believed to be involved in recent violence in central Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province, a US military spokesman said yesterday.
The group was detained on Sunday during a raid involving dozens of US troops in Uruzgan province, LT. Col. Bryan Hilferty told a news conference in Kabul.
Two of the captured men were “mid-level Taleban leaders”, he said.
“We do believe that the people we brought under control have been involved in some of the violence,” he said.
Hilferty said some of those detained in the raid would be released soon. He did not say how many.
The south and southeast of Afghanistan has been hit by a wave of violence, including a bombing in the city of Kandahar in January which killed children and rocket attacks and ambushes against the US-led military coalition and Afghan forces.
Hilferty said that the raid, conducted in a village some 64 southwest of troubled Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province, did not result in any casualties.
“No shots were fired and no one was injured,” he said.
Deh Rawood, some 400 km southwest of Kabul, has been the scene of much violence since the toppling of the hard-line Taleban regime in late 2001. Hundreds of people, mostly Taleban insurgents, have been killed in the region.
Mines, home-made bombs and rifles were also seized during the raid which lasted a few hours, Hilferty said.
He said that the raid, which was based on a tip-off, was part of the US-led anti-militant operation “Mountain Blizzard” launched in early January with thousands of the US-led soldiers in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Hilferty said the coalition was holding 155 suspected Taleban at Bagram air base north of Kabul and that a small number of suspected militants were being held in military bases around the country as a temporary measure.
