KABUL, 20 April 2005 — Nine Taleban rebels were killed in an overnight gunfight after clashes with Afghan military forces earlier yesterday bringing the death toll in some of the heaviest fighting in southern Afghanistan this year to 17, an official said.
Afghan National Army Gen. Muslim Hamid said Afghan forces supported by coalition troops had conducted a “clearance operation” in which they killed nine rebels after the fighting in the southeastern province of Zabul.
Sixteen other militants were captured during the earlier gunbattle, officials earlier told AFP. Hamid said three of those arrested were Pakistani nationals and two were Chechens thought to be linked to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda’s terror network. Two of Monday’s night casualties were also Pakistani, Hamid said.
As of yesterday, the general said his troops continued to hunt for rebels in the Deh Chopan mountainous region of Zabul. “The search for Taleban continues,” he said. During Monday’s clash Afghan soldiers backed by warplanes and troops from the US-led coalition killed eight Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked rebels, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Zahir Azimi said.
Meanwhile, the United States has released 17 Afghan detainees from military custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and they were handed to Afghan authorities yesterday, officials said. Abdul Wakil Omari, spokesman for the Afghan Supreme Court, said the men were formally transferred to the control of local officials at a ceremony later in the day.
“Seventeen prisoners have been released from Guantanamo Bay,” Omari told AFP. “They are in the country.”
The detainees’ fate would be decided later, he added. It was not clear if the men would face any charges in Afghanistan.
