Over 40 Taliban said killed, Afghan deminers abducted

KABUL, Sept 6 (Reuters) Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed more than 40 Taliban in a 12-hour battle in a restive southern province, taking the guerrilla death toll to nearly 200 in a fortnight, the US military said today.

In a separate incident, an armed group kidnapped 12 Afghan nationals working for a local demining group in the eastern province of Paktia today, their employer said, the latest in a spree of abductions mainly by Taliban guerrillas.

Insurgents ambushed a coalition patrol in villages in Kandahar province's Shah Wali Kot district with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Kandahar has been the site of repeated clashes in recent months.

''The extremist fighters were visually observed firing on he patrol from compounds located within the villages,'' the statement said.

''Throughout the engagement, insurgents reinforced their positions with an estimated 150 additional fighters. Coalition aircraft destroyed the positively identified enemy firing positions with precision guided munitions.'' The Taliban said they were unaware of any ground fighting in the Shah Wali Kot district yesterday.

Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said by telephone from an undisclosed location that the Taliban had downed an American helicopter in the area. NATO denied that any helicopters had been lost.

There was no independent account of how many people were killed or what had happened.

The US-led military says coalition forces have killed hundreds of Taliban in a spree of confrontations in recent weeks. The Taliban have admitted some losses, but say Afghan and foreign troops vastly exaggerate enemy death tolls.

More than 7,000 people have been killed during the past 19 months in Afghanistan, the bloodiest period since the resurgent Taliban's overthrow in 2001.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the abduction of the deminers, which comes after three deminers were kidnapped and murdered last month in an attack blamed on the Taliban, and after Taliban fighters kidnapped 18 Afghan demining experts in June. They were later released.

Deen Mohammad Darwish, spokesman for Paktia's governor, blamed the mass abduction on ''enemies of Afghanistan'', a term officials use to describe Islamist Taliban guerrillas and al Qaeda militants.

The mass abduction comes days after Taliban insurgents vowed to kidnap and kill foreign nationals from countries who have troops in Afghanistan, and after their high-profile kidnapping of 23 South Korean missionaries. The Taliban were not immediately available for comment.

REUTERS PDT VC2135