41 Taleban, six Afghan cops killed

Forty-one suspected Taliban and six policemen were killed in a major battle in southern Afghanistan in an area where the Taliban leader once lived, a governor said on Saturday.
The battle south-west of Kandahar city lasted almost the entire day Friday, with helicopters from the US-led coalition firing rockets assisting Afghan forces on the ground. "In the result, 41 Taleban were killed, a big number of them were wounded," Kandahar governor Assadullah Khalid told AFP.
"Six police were martyred, nine police were wounded," he said, adding that three civilians were also wounded and 13 Taleban arrested.
The dead included a district police chief while a district governor was among the wounded, he said.
A resident of one village in the area said a 19-year-old girl was killed and two children wounded in police fire but this was not confirmed by officials.
The village, Sartak, was quiet Saturday but bore signs of the fighting with craters in some buildings from rocket fire and walls pocked with bulletholes, an AFP reporter said. Khalid said Taleban fighters had gathered in the area, which includes the Panjwayi and Zarai districts about 40 kilometres (24 miles) south-west of Kandahar city, for about three days after fleeing an offensive in neighbouring Helmand province. A Taleban spokesman said the battle had started with a Taleban attack. The spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, only acknowledged two Taleban deaths.
"Late in the day the US planes appeared and Taleban escaped the area. Lots of civilians were killed by the bombing in the village," Ahmadi said by telephone from an unknown location.
One wounded civilian, Zahir Shah, told AFP from hospital in Kandahar that he had been struck by a bullet while leaving a mosque in Singesar area, where fugitive Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar lived for several years.
"As I got out of the mosque, a PK (Russian-made) machine gun bullet hit me in my belly and after that I don't remember anything," Shah said. He estimated there had been up to 250 Taleban in the village.
Operation Mountain Lion, in which about eight insurgents have been killed, saw no major engagements Friday but Afghan and coalition "continued to pressure the enemy by continuous manoeuvre," the US military said.
The operation is seen as direct retaliation to a new spring offensive launched by the Taleban with a stream of suicide blasts and other attacks in the south and east of the country.