14 Taliban fighters killed in South Afghanisan

KABUL, June 23: US-led forces have killed 14 Taliban fighters in clashes during a major operation against rebels in volatile southern Afghanistan, the US military said.

Eight insurgents were killed in a raid yesterday on a cave complex used as a ''meeting place and sanctuary'' for Taliban bomb-makers in Uruzgan province.

Six rebels were arrested while a cache containing AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and two machine guns was also recovered, a spokesman for the U.S. military said in a statement late yesterday. Coalition forces suffered no losses.

Six other Taliban fighters were killed in an attack in neighbouring Helmand province on Wednesday, the spokesman said.

The Taliban had no immediate comment on the attacks. The rebels, ousted from power in 2001, have stepped up attacks this year in their southern and eastern heartland, bordering Pakistan, where they enjoy considerable support from the local population.

A convoy carrying Danish army commander-in-chief Hans Jesper Helso was hit by a roadside bomb near Feyzabad today, in northeastern Afghanistan, the Danish central army command said.

One soldier was slightly injured and a light-armoured patrol vehicle was damaged. Helso was in Afghanistan on a routine inspection, an army spokesman said in Copenhagen.

In southern Zabul province today, residents found two decapitated bodies. Local officials said they were civilians killed by the Taliban on suspicion of being ''informers'' for Afghan government forces.

More than 1,000 people, including more than 40 foreign soldiers, have died this year, the worst bloodshed in the war-ravaged country since the fall of the Taliban and ahead of NATO troops taking over the volatile south from the US forces.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai voiced his concern yesterday over the growing violence and urged the world to extend the war against militants beyond his country's borders. It was an oblique reference to neighbouring Pakistan from where Afghan officials say the Taliban organise and launch attacks.

REUTERS