Troops recapture Afghan district from Taliban

Kabul, Jun 3: US-led coalition and Afghan troops recaptured a district occupied by the Taliban, killing at least 15 militants, an Afghan official said today.

The troops took control of the Chora district of the southern Uruzgan province late yesterday, days after the Taliban had captured the area, the defence ministry spokesman said.

''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 said in a statement.

The statement did not say if there were any casualties among coalition or Afghan troops. Coalition and Taliban spokesmen could not be contacted for immediate comment about the incident.

The operation comes during the bloodiest phase in a Taliban-led insurgency since US-led coalition forces overthrew the militants' radical Islamic government in 2001.

When the Taliban took the district, they said they had killed more than a dozen policemen and had taken up to 40 as hostages.

Twenty of them were later released.

Some 900 people have been killed in the insurgency since the beginning of the year, half of them in May.

Air strikes by US-led coalition forces inflicted heavy casualties on the insurgents in southern Afghanistan last month, according to Afghan and coalition officials.

A rise in Taliban activity in the south coincides with preparations for NATO-led peacekeepers to take control of southern provinces from coalition forces, which have had a more offensive mission to hunt down Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.

REUTERS