ஆப்கானிஸ்தான் மேலும் 60 இஸ்லாமிய பயங்கரவாதிகள் பலி

Nearly 60 militants killed in Afghanistan: military
12 hours ago
KABUL (AFP) — Afghan and international forces announced Tuesday they had killed nearly 60 militants in two days as the battle against Talban-led extremists continued.

With the insurgency growing more deadly since the October 7, 2001 US-led invasion, the Afghan government reiterated it would welcome peace talks.

Forty-three militants were killed in heavy fighting in the southern province of Zabul on Sunday after an Afghan and international patrol came under attack from several directions, the US-led coalition said.

The soldiers responded, including with air power. "Afghan National Security Forces and coalition forces killed 43 militants in Qalat district, Zabul province, October 5," it said.

It was one of the heaviest tolls reported in days in regular clashes between security forces and militants said to be from the Taliban movement and other extremist factions.

Police in Helmand claimed separately that 15 Taliban fighters were killed in the volatile Nad Ali district late Monday after international and Afghan forces came under attack.

A Taliban spokesman said there had been no losses to its forces during the fighting and it was impossible to independently verify what had happened in the remote area which is off-limits to most outsiders.

With security deteriorating again this year, there has been a new focus on President Hamid Karzai's calls for talks with Taliban -- including fugitive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar -- who are not linked to Al-Qaeda.

However Karzai's main spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, again rejected Tuesday media reports that Saudi King Abdullah had organised a first round last month. "No such talks have happened as of yet," Hamidzada told reporters, adding though the government was pushing for such negotiations.

Former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif was meanwhile willing to broker peace talks, his spokesman said in Islamabad, amid reports that he was already playing a key role.

Pakistan backed the Taliban during Sharif's second spell in power from 1997 to 1999. He has strong ties to Saudi Arabia, having spent seven years in exile there until his return to Pakistan last year.

The United States launched its "war on terror" in Afghanistan weeks after the September 2001 attacks that killed about 3,000 people in New York and Washington and were blamed on Al-Qaeda, then based in this country.

It took about two months for the Taliban to be pushed out of Kabul to their stronghold city of Kandahar in the south and then -- according to Afghans -- across the border into Pakistan.

But they have been able to regroup and fight back, despite the efforts of the growing Afghan army and police and about 60-70,000 international troops.

The dragging violence has worried many inside and outside the country but US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said Monday there was "no reason to be defeatist".

He was reacting to Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, Britain's top commander in Afghanistan, who said in an interview published Sunday that "we're not going to win this war".