US-led forces say kill al Qaeda fighters in Afghan

KABUL, July 17: US-led forces killed four suspected al Qaeda fighters during a raid in southeast Afghanistan today, as the country's defence minister said Taliban resistance was on the wane.

After days of some of the heaviest fighting since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, coalition forces said they had also attacked and destroyed a ''safe house'' of a known Taliban commander in Sangin district in Helmand province.

A British military spokesman said fighting in Nawzad town in the same province, the scene of almost daily firefights or bombing raids this month, had eased today after forces had captured a hospital occupied by militants.

Foreign troops are engaged in a big offensive against militants in the south, where a NATO peacekeeping force is due to take over from the US-led coalition force at the end of the month.

Coalition forces said in a statement the raid in Khost province had also resulted in the capture of three suspected al Qaeda members. Residents in the town told Reuters one of those killed was a local cleric.

''The purpose of this operation was to capture or kill an al Qaeda operational leader, who is a significant threat to Afghan and coalition forces in the Khost province,'' it said.

The US military said the raid on the ''safe house'' in Sangin was conducted last night. It did not name the commander who was targeted, but said coalition forces had been conducting surveillance on the property for an extended period of time.

British and Afghan forces came under heavy fire from a hospital in Nawzad town in Helmand province yesterday, days after nearly being overrun in an attack by 200 Taliban.

''We managed to take the hospital and we established there were no civilians inside,'' British military spokesman Captain Drew Gibson said today.

Around 50 people were killed in violence mostly in the south over the weekend, including one foreign soldier.

The country's defence minister said in an interview published today Afghan intelligence had learned that the Taliban's command and control structure was fragmenting due to heavy losses and many mid-ranking commanders were fleeing to safety in Pakistan.

''I think that in the next two or three months there will be some major changes,'' General Abdul Rahim Wardak told the Financial Times, predicting that by November Taliban militants would have lost steam.

Wardak said Taliban militants had stepped up their attacks to coincide with the alliance deployment, aiming to undermine public support for the Afghanistan mission in European NATO countries.

''There is a regrouping and an intensification of the efforts,'' he said in the interview. ''One element has to do with this takeover of NATO from the coalition.'' More than 1,600 people have been killed in Afghan violence this year, most of them Taliban, according to US and Afghan figures. More than 60 foreign troops have been killed.

REUTERS