KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 12 July 2006 — Afghan and US-led coalition forces involved in a massive anti-Taleban operation killed 30 more rebels yesterday as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited the country. The early morning airstrike in the southern province of Helmand targeted a Taleban commander and associates who had “actively planned and carried out attacks on Afghan and coalition forces,” a coalition spokeswoman told AFP.
“(It) resulted in the estimated death of at least 30 Taleban fighters,” Capt. Julie Roberge told AFP. It was not immediately clear if the death toll included the commander. The strike was part of Operation Mountain Thrust, the biggest campaign against the Taleban movement since it was ousted from government by US-led and Afghan forces in late 2001.
Rumsfeld said after talks with President Hamid Karzai in the capital that the United States was committed to helping defeat the Taleban but that Afghanistan also needed more international help. There was “no question” Taleban fighters and their Al-Qaeda allies were involved in cross-border activity, he said, and Afghanistan’s neighbors needed to cooperate more to prevent this.
Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan in particular of not doing enough to combat Taleban and other militants who they say are supporting and training fighters on the Pakistani side of the border. Rumsfeld said Europe could also do more to stem Afghanistan’s massive illegal trade in opium, which he said was fuelling the Taleban insurgency. Afghanistan produces nearly 90 percent of the world’s opium, which makes up most of the opium and heroin on the streets of Europe and threatens to turn the country into a “narco-state.”
About a quarter of Afghanistan’s annual output of roughly 4,000 tons of opium is grown in Helmand, the province where the coalition said an airstrike struck the Taleban hide-out.
The troops launched the raid on the hide-out in Sangin on the basis of information obtained from recently captured Taleban militants, the coalition said.
As it flew away after the raid, a coalition helicopter experienced a mechanical malfunction and was forced to make an emergency landing.
“It was determined the helicopter could not be repaired and it was destroyed in place by a coalition air strike,” the coalition said. Sangin has been a focus of Taleban activity for months, with a base for British forces there coming under regular nightly attack. The attacks range from a few shots to larger assaults, such as that on July 1 that killed two British soldiers and an interpreter.
