AFGHANISTAN:More than 1,000 villagers have fled a southern Afghan town as Taliban fighters dig in to repel Nato efforts to drive them out, residents and officials said yesterday.
Helmand provincial governor Haji Assadullah Wafa said a military operation would soon be launched to recapture Musa Qala, which the Taliban overran last week. British-led Nato forces had struck a deal with tribal elders after months of heavy fighting to withdraw from the town if the Taliban were also kept out.
"The Taliban are only in the town to create problems for the people," he said. "They do not have the ability to seize an area and maintain their control over it." It is not uncommon for the Taliban to seize a town, but they do not hold them for long.
A large number of Taliban fighters had reinforced the town with heavy weapons, a resident explained by phone, and Nato spy planes could be heard overhead.
The Taliban have accused foreign troops of violating the truce with an air strike that killed the brother of local Taliban leader Mullah Ghafour. Nato commanders and villager elders say that strike was outside the truce area. Ghafour himself was killed in an air strike on Sunday.
US-led forces said they also arrested two suspected al-Qaeda members yesterday in the east, near the Pakistan border. Both were Afghans, said the force.
Also yesterday, a roadside bomb killed two Afghan guards working for a US security company in the southern province of Kandahar, provincial officials said. Six guards were wounded.
Three police officers were killed while defusing a mine planted by the Taliban on a road in the west of the country on Tuesday night, police said.
After the bloodiest year since the Taliban was ousted in 2001, Nato and the insurgents are gearing up for a major offensive when the snow melts in spring.
The new commander of Nato's 33,000-strong International Security Assistance Force, US Gen Dan McNeill, is expected to take a more aggressive approach than his British predecessor, Gen David Richards, after taking over on Sunday.
Nato's top operational commander wants more troops to help crush the Taliban, but faces widespread reluctance among allies, alliance officials said in Brussels on Tuesday.- ( Reuters)