Foreign and Afghan troops kill 28 militants

[January 22, 2009]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- NATO and Afghan troops killed 22 militants Thursday in airstrikes and ground battles near the border with Pakistan, officials said.

Separately, U.S. coalition troops killed six Taliban fighters during a raid on militants blamed for roadside bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan, a coalition statement said.

The fighting comes at a time when the U.S., NATO and Afghan troops are trying to turn the tide against the Taliban-led violence, which was at an all-time high in 2008 with insurgent attacks up 30 percent from the year before. Militants have turned the lawless tribal region between Afghanistan and Pakistan into a sanctuary from which they launch attacks in both countries.

The U.S. has some 33,000 troops in the country, but President Barack Obama is expected to send up to 30,000 more forces this year as his administration shifts its focus from the war in Iraq to Afghanistan.

NATO's Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, speaking in neighboring Pakistan, said the new troops will take the fight to "places where it was not, or insufficiently, possible up till now."

"I also think that more forces will make it possible to hold territory once the enemy has been chased off that territory," Scheffer said.

There are nearly 70,000 foreign troops, including 55,000 NATO-led troops in Afghanistan, the highest number since the Taliban were ousted from power in the U.S. invasion in 2001.

Officials say these numbers are low for counterinsurgency operations that involve fighting in vast spaces, with little or no government presence.

Scheffer said other NATO allies should match the new U.S. troop surge not only with soldiers but also with civilian experts to help with reconstruction and development in a country brought to its knees by decades of war.

In latest violence, NATO and Afghan troops battled with militants in the eastern Khost province early Thursday, a spokesman for the alliance said.

NATO said 22 militants were killed during the operation, but Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the Afghan defense ministry spokesman, said eight militants died and two were wounded during the clash. It was not immediately possible to explain the difference in the count.

In southern Zabul province, meanwhile, the U.S. coalition troops hunted Wednesday for a Taliban commander involved in a roadside-bomb network and the movement of foreign fighters, a coalition statement said.

The U.S. soldiers clashed with Taliban militants who opened fire on them from their compound after they refused to leave peacefully, it said. Five insurgents were killed in the gunbattle, and one militant who fired from behind large rocks died in an airstrike.

In the last three years Taliban fighters have taken control over wider areas of territory and continue to use roadside bombs in their campaign against Afghan and foreign troops. The number of such attacks rose 33 percent in 2008 compared to a year before, according to NATO.

[Associated Press; By FISNIK ABRASHI]

Associated Press reporters Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Christopher Bodeen in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.