Afghan forces hunt Taliban after surge in violence

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, May 19 (Reuters) Afghan police hunted for Taliban insurgents today after two of the country's bloodiest days since the 2001 overthrow of the hardline Islamists.

About 100 people were killed in violence that began on Wednesday.

It included a large-scale attack on a town in the southern province of Helmand and two suicide blasts in different parts of the country.

''We are hunting for them all over Mosa Qala district, to capture them or kill them,'' said Helmand's deputy governor, Amir Mohammad Akhundzada.

Hundreds of Taliban stormed Mosa Qala town on Wednesday evening and fighting raged for hours. Thirteen policemen and about 50 insurgents were killed, Akhundzada said.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan government forces in recent months as thousands more NATO peacekeepers arrive in the country.

The US military says the Taliban are intensifying their insurgency to try to sap domestic support for the foreign forces.

There will soon be nearly 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, the most since 2001.

Akhundzada said three policemen had been wounded in a clash with Taliban near Mosa Qala town late yesterday and the Taliban were also believed to have suffered casualties.

But there were no other major incidents, he said.

Among the dead found after clashes yesterday's in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, was a provincial-level Taliban commander, said police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang. He identified the commander as Qari Naeem.

Sixteen Taliban, three policeman and an intelligence official were killed in Ghazni on Thursday, officials said. A passer-by was killed in a suicide car-bomb attack on a US military convoy. One American was wounded. In another suicide bomb attack on Thursday, an American civilian contractor was killed and five people, including two other Americans, were wounded in the generally peaceful western city of Herat.

US troops at the site of the car-bomb blast, fearing another attack, shot dead a driver who failed to stop at a road-block.

PAKISTAN BLAMED At least 25 Taliban were killed and 26 captured in two days of fighting in the southern province of Kandahar. The US military said up to 20 other insurgents might have been killed in an air strike.

A Canadian woman soldier was killed in Kandahar on Wednesday evening, hours before Canada's parliament narrowly backed a two-year extension of the country's Afghan mission to 2009.

Canadians are deeply divided over their 2,300 troops in Afghanistan. The Netherlands is sending up to 1,600 and Britain will soon have 3,300 in the south.

Many Afghans blame neighbouring Pakistan for the violence and on Thursday President Hamid Karzai repeated accusations that the Taliban were getting support from Pakistan.

Pakistan, which is fighting Taliban and al Qaeda militants on its side of the border, rejected the accusation. Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said he was saddened but would not over-react.

''Why should we be trying to destablise Afghanistan?'' he asked in a speech in the Pakistani parliament.

''Afghanistan has a history of problems ... We have a difficult situation here. Let's not loose our cool,'' he said.

Pakistan was the main backer of the Taliban until the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

REUTERS