KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 22 June 2005 — Hundreds of Afghan police backed by US airstrikes retook control yesterday of a district capital in southwestern Afghanistan that was overrun by the Taleban, killing 32 guerrillas, police said. The guerrillas seized Mian Nishin, capital of the district of the same name in Kandahar province last week, capturing 30 police officers and a district chief. They executed eight policemen before announcing the release of the other 23 people.
About 400 police took part in the operation to force the guerrillas out of Mian Nishin, said deputy provincial police chief Salim Khan. “We chased the Taleban to an area 10 km north,” Khan told Reuters. “We found them in a village called Murghai and as a result of the clashes there, 11 Taleban were killed and 15 suspects were arrested.”
Khan said another 21 guerrillas were killed by US airstrikes in support of the operation. He gave no details on whether there were any government casualties. Lt. Cindy Moore, a spokeswoman for the US military, confirmed an operation involving US forces was under way but said she could not give details while it was in progress. Hundreds of people have been killed in a surge in guerrilla violence in Afghanistan in the past few months, raising security concerns for parliamentary elections to be held on Sept. 18.
Gen. John Abizaid, head of the US military’s Central Command, met Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday as part of a visit to the country. State television said security forces had captured Mulla Naqibullah Akhundzada, a Taleban commander active in Ghazni province south of Kabul. It said he was caught with six other Taleban members but did not say when.
US airstrikes killed 15 to 20 guerrillas on Sunday in neighboring Helmand province and Afghan officials reported 21 more militant deaths in clashes later in the day. Mian Nishin is in the north of Kandahar province, about 400 km southwest of the Afghan capital Kabul, and was the scene of operations by Afghan and US-led forces last week in which government officials said nine guerrillas were killed.
In another incident in Kandahar province yesterday, a driver employed by the Afghan-UN election body was wounded and another man was killed when their vehicle came under attack, UN officials said. Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi telephoned Reuters to claim responsibility for the attack. But Terrence White, the Joint Electoral Management Body’s regional spokesman, said it was unclear whether the Taleban were involved.
Suspected Taleban rebels also attacked a vehicle in another district of Kandahar province yesterday, killing the husband of a woman working on the country’s upcoming legislative polls, and injuring the driver. The incident in Maiwand district was the second fatal attack this month linked to September’s parliamentary vote. The victim was escorting his wife, an employee with the UN-backed Afghan electoral commission, when the militants struck, said Abdul Qahar Wasifi, regional electoral official in Kandahar.
