NATO says air strike kills senior Taliban fighter

KABUL, Oct 17 (Reuters) US warplanes killed a senior Taliban commander in an air strike in the violence-racked southern province of Uruzgan on Tuesday, NATO said.

''The aircraft engaged a known mid-level Taliban commander in the vicinity of Bagh-Khosak in the Khod Valley with three 500 pound bombs, killing him and ten to 15 additional Taliban militants,'' the alliance said in a statement.

It added the dead had been involved in ambushes of Afghan soldiers and troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Mountainous Uruzgan is a stronghold of the Taliban, ousted by US-led forces in 2001, and next to Kandahar province, the birthplace of the hardline Islamist group.

The Taliban have regrouped since their ouster and this has been the bloodiest year since 2001, with more than 3,000 people, including about 150 foreign soldiers, killed in fighting across the country.

Most of the violence has been in the south, where NATO took command from US forces in July before taking over the whole country this month.

An Italian photojournalist kidnapped in Helmand province, south of Uruzgan and the opium capital of the world's major producer, has made contact with an Italian-run hospital, the PeaceReporter (www.peacereporter.net) Web site said today.

London-based Gabriele Torsello (www.kashgt.co.uk), a Muslim, told the hospital's security chief he was fine and that his abductors were moving him around, said Peace Reporter, which specialises in conflicts.

Torsello was kidnapped by five gunmen last week from a public bus on the way from Lashkar Gah, Helmand's capital, to Kandahar.

Helmand and Kandahar are the two most dangerous provinces in Afghanistan and have seen the heaviest fighting between the Taliban and NATO forces and troops from the US-led coalition.

Soon before he left for Kandahar, Torsello, a bearded Muslim travelling the area in local dress, had been arrested by police near the Helmand governor's office on suspicion of being a Taliban guerrilla, PeaceReporter quoted a hospital worker saying.

Police say his kidnappers are Taliban, but the Islamist group has denied any involvement, blaming criminals instead.

REUTERS BDP BD1556