Karzai purges police, Taliban repulsed in Afghan south

KABUL, June 3 (Reuters) Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has sacked dozens of senior police officials days after anti-US riots in Kabul, an official said today, while up to 32 Taliban fighters were killed in clashes in the south.

The shake-up may also include Kabul's police chief, General Jamil Junbish, whose forces failed to prevent rioters from rampaging through the city on Monday after a US military truck crashed into Afghan vehicles and killed at least five people.

The worst anti-American unrest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 coincided with the bloodiest phase in a 4 1/2 year-old insurgency raging in the country's south and east.

Nearly 400 people died in May alone, mostly militants killed by coalition air strikes, but at least 17 civilians were also killed, fuelling resentment against the US military presence.

Yesterday, coalition and Afghan troops recaptured a district of the central southern province of Uruzgan that hadfallen under Taliban control for the past few days.

''Fifteen bodies of the enemies of Afghanistan lie in the battle field and up to 20 of them have been killed. The operation is still going on against the enemies who are on the run,'' Zahir Azimi, a Defence Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

A coalition spokesman said the operation had involved air strikes. He could not comment on Taliban casualties, but said there were none on the US and Afghan side.

After the Taliban took the district, they said they had killed over a dozen police and had taken up to 40 as hostages. Twenty were later released.

Separately, 12 Taliban were killed in an attack on a police station in neighbouring Kandahar province yesterday, said DawudAhmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

KARZAI RAPS US TROOPS The Taliban is active in Kabul too, but no-one has blamed them for the riots on May 29, which were largely fuelled by youths from the northern parts of the city, where people are generally hostile not only to the Taliban, but Karzai too.

Monday riots in the capital prompted Karzai to order the replacement of more than 80 interior ministry generals, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The interior ministry said in a statement that 86 police generals have been appointed for ''improvement and maintenance of security and for necessary reforms in the ministry.'' Police generals are in charge of precincts and departments within the Interior Ministry.

During Monday's protests against the US presence, rioters looted shops, besieged a television station, burned the offices of a US aid group, and broke windows of a new hotel before reaching the gates of parliament and the US embassy.

At least seven people were killed in the riots.

The top traffic police officer in the district where the accident happened said he saw US soldiers at the tail of a withdrawing convoy shoot three people as hundreds of people surged towards departing US vehicles.

Karzai, who was also the target of protesters anger, has condemned the use of arms by the US-led coalition forces.

Kabul has been under a night time curfew since the riots.

Reuters SHB GC1533