KABUL, 7 September 2005 — US and Afghan forces swooped in by helicopter and killed 12 militants who were preparing to carry out attacks before this month’s parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, the US military said yesterday.
They also arrested nine rebels during Monday’s operation in the mountainous southeastern province of Zabul, which was backed by American warplanes and helicopter gunships, it said in a statement.
It was the latest in a string of bloody clashes between US-led troops and suspected guerrillas from the ousted Taleban regime, who have pledged to derail the Sept. 18 polls. The statement said the US and Afghan soldiers came under small-arms fire from the rebels as helicopters inserted them near a Taleban hide-out.
“These soldiers have guts,” said Sgt. Maj. Bradley Meyers, who belongs to one of the units involved. “They showed courage not just in going after the enemy, but by going right up the mountains and diving across the rocks.”
“We were engaged as soon as we got off the helicopters. We returned fire and the enemy fell, one by one,” he added. The statement said the forces were patrolling to “engage the enemy in their staging areas before they execute operations designed to influence or disrupt the election process in the Zabul area.” Zabul province spokesman Gulab Shah Alikhil told AFP only 11 militants were killed and 17 were captured in the fighting, which he said was in the Khak-e-Afghan and Sharkoy districts, both Taleban hotbeds. Alikhil said the operation was ongoing.
The firefight comes two days after Afghan and US forces killed another 13 suspected Taleban and arrested 47 others as they searched for a kidnapped election candidate in the southern province of Kandahar, Afghan officials said.
Also at the weekend, a bomb killed another candidate in the southwest while eight policemen, two militants and a civilian died in other incidents. Some 20,000 US-led coalition forces remain in Afghanistan to hunt down the remnants of the Taleban.
