ARGHANDAB, AFGHANISTAN — Civilians piled belongings onto trucks Wednesday and fled two villages infiltrated by hundreds of Taliban militants outside Afghanistan’s second-largest city.
U.S., Canadian and Afghan troops had about 250 of the insurgents surrounded.
The troops killed 50 militants in three days of fighting 15 miles north of Kandahar city, the provincial police chief said. Three policemen and one Afghan soldier also died.
“The people are fleeing because the Taliban are taking over civilian homes,” Sayed Agha Saqib said. “There have been no airstrikes. We are trying our best to attack those areas where there are no civilians, only Taliban.” Saqib said 250 militants were surrounded and that 16 suspected Taliban had been arrested.
In eastern Afghanistan, meanwhile, a nighttime raid on a compound sparked a gunbattle late Wednesday that left three people dead, including two children, officials said today.
The U.S. and Afghan troops clashed with suspected militants at a compound in Bati Kot district in Nangarhar province, said Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition. After the clash, a militant and two children were found dead inside the compound, Belcher said. A woman and another child were wounded, he said.
The fighters moved into the Arghandab district of Kandahar province this week, about two weeks after the death of a tribal leader, Mullah Naqib, who had kept Taliban fighters out of his region.
The gathering of fighters on the doorstep of Kandahar – the Taliban’s former power base – is reminiscent of last year’s battle in neighboring Panjwayi district, one of the biggest fights in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
NATO officials have said hundreds of Taliban tried to overrun Kandahar last year. But Saqib said he did not think the militants occupying the villages of Chaharqulba and Sayedan would attempt a run on Afghanistan’s main southern city. “We are capturing and killing them, and I don’t think it will cause any problem for Kandahar,” he said.
