June 15, 2005 - 18:09 KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - Suspected Taliban rebels broke into an Afghan medical clinic near the Pakistan border and killed a doctor and six of his assistants, while seven gunmen were killed when hundreds of insurgents clashed with Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces, officials said Wednesday.
The fighting is the latest in Afghanistan that has raised fears of instability ahead of crucial legislative elections in September.
The attack on the clinic in Khost province came late Tuesday, said Almar Gul Mungle, commander of a frontier security force. It was unclear why the medical staff were targeted but Mungle suggested rebels may have thought they worked for the government.
In a second attack, suspected Taliban rebels in southern Kandahar province shot and killed a tribal elder whose family prominently supported President Hamid Karzai's government, said local deputy police chief Gen. Salim Khan.
Meanwhile, a purported senior commander from Afghanistan's ousted Taliban militia said in a television interview broadcast Wednesday both the radical group's fugitive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden are alive and well.
In the interview on Pakistan's Geo television, a man identified as Taliban military commander Mullah Akhtar Usmani, a former aviation minister and corps commander in southern Kandahar province, said he still receives instructions from Omar.
Asked whether bin Laden is hiding in parts of Afghanistan still under Taliban control, he refused to specify where the accused terrorist mastermind is but insisted: "Thanks be to God he is absolutely fine."
Three and a half years since the hardline Taliban regime was ousted by a U.S.-led military campaign, about 18,500 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan hunting remnants of the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies.
The fighting that left seven rebels dead erupted after about 90 suspected Taliban gunmen attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol Tuesday on the border between Kandahar and Uruzgan, two southern provinces, said army commander Gen. Muslim Amid.
Four Afghan soldiers were wounded in the fighting, which ended with the insurgents fleeing into nearby mountains, carrying their injured, he said. Two rebels were captured.
Troops pursued the rebels into the mountains and were still hunting them Wednesday, Amid added.
U.S. military spokesman Lt.-Col. Jerry O'Hara confirmed coalition troops were involved in the fighting but declined to comment beyond confirming no coalition casualties, saying an assessment was under way.
Published June 15, 2005
By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
BAGHDAD -- An exiled Syrian opposition leader is visiting Iraq to discuss cooperation with the Iraqi government in combating the Baath regime in Syria.
Farid al-Ghadiri, head of the Syrian Reform Party, told UPI he talked with Iraqi officials and party leaders hostile to Damascus to explore ways to support his party in its bid to fight the regime in Damascus.
"We discussed the possibility of opening offices for Syrian Reform Party in Iraq in order to step up its political opposition activity from territory close to Syria in cooperation with the Iraqi authorities," Ghadiri said.
He said the Iraqi people is suffering from Syrian terrorism exactly like the Syrian people and the Lebanese people did and "it is about time that this regime in Damascus steps down."
Ghadiri, who has contacts with U.S. official circles, said recently that he received U.S. financial assistance to step up his party's activities against Damascus. He also called for unifying outside pressures, Arab, European and American, on Syria to introduce democracy.