Posted on 07/03/2003 9:45:57 AM PDT by knighthawk
KABUL: Ten Taliban fighters were killed on Thursday in fighting in southern Afghanistan as the rebels tried to retreat after four days of clashes with government forces, a provincial official said.
About 60 Taliban fighters managed to slip out of the Ata Ghar mountains in Zabul province and moved into neighbouring Kandahar province where government forces confronted them, said Khalid Pashtun, a spokesman for Kandahar's governor.
Pashtun said 10 Taliban were killed and 16 wounded in the fighting.
"Fortunately, so far we have lost no one," Pashtun told Reuters.
He had no further details of the fighting in Marouf district, which is near the border with Pakistan.
Southern Afghanistan is one of the most volatile parts of the country and some provincial officials have said Taliban remnants are regrouping along the border with Pakistan.
The south was the main bastion of the radical Taliban, who were driven from power by a U.S.-led offensive in late 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
Mullah Abdul Rauf, a provincial governor during Taliban rule, told Reuters on Wednesday that Hafiz Abdur Rahim, one of the most wanted senior commanders from the ousted regime, was leading more than 200 Taliban fighters at Ata Ghar.
Rahim has been a constant thorn in the side of Afghan government forces and their U.S. allies since giving the Americans the slip in the mountains in southern Afghanistan in January.
A U.S. military spokesman said U.S. forces were not involved in the fighting.
"If the Taliban is beginning to come back into this area that is, of course, of interest to us and we'll be looking into it but we don't have specific details," Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Lefforge told reporters at the U.S. military headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul.
Afghan government officials say remnants of Taliban and their al Qaeda allies are plotting attacks on Afghan and U.S.-led troops and foreign aid workers from the safety of the Pakistan side of the border.
Pakistan, once the key backer of the Taliban but now a close ally of the United States, says it is doing all it can to stop militants crossing the porous frontier.
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