HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — Taliban rebels overran a western Afghan district, sparking a fierce battle Tuesday that left six civilians, four policemen and 30 militants dead, officials said.
A soldier with the US-led coalition, an Afghan spy chief and 20 militants were killed in other incidents linked to the spiralling insurgency by the hardline regime, which was ousted by international forces in late 2001.
Local Taliban carried out the raid on Gulistan district of western Farah province on Monday night, joined by about 400 rebels from neighbouring Helmand, provincial police chief Abdul Rehman Sarjang said.
Intense clashes continued Tuesday night, with four policemen and six local people helping them killed in the fighting, Sarjang said, adding that 30 Taliban have also been slain.
Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi claimed the hardline movement's fighters had captured Gulistan. "We are in control of the district now," he said.
But the police chief denied that, saying police had made a tactical retreat and that Afghan forces and NATO-led troops were being deployed in support of police "to retake total control."
NATO's International Security Assistance Force said, however, that it was not involved.
The Taliban have kept control of at least one district in Helmand province, Musa Qala, for almost a year. They have seized other districts, mainly in the south, for short periods of time.
Separately, NATO and US-led coalition forces plus Afghan troopers launched a "clean-up" operation in the Arghandab district of southern Kandahar province, killing 20 militants, provincial police Sayed Aqa Saqib said.
Taliban spokesman Ahmadi and another purported spokesman for the group claimed the militants had also taken control of Arghandab and that 30 policemen had surrendered to them.
But police said the rebels had only infiltrated the district's outlying areas.
Meanwhile, a US-led coalition soldier was killed Tuesday in a military operation west of Kandahar city. Another foreign soldier and an Afghan policeman were wounded, the US military said in a statement.
The dead soldier was the 190th foreign service member to be killed in Afghanistan this year. International forces in Afghanistan do not release the nationalities of their casualties, leaving that task to their home countries.
In the central-southern province of Uruzgan, the US-led coalition announced that several Taliban were killed and three others captured in Baluchi, a region where 30 insurgents died in heavy clashes with NATO on Sunday.
In addition, an Afghan spy chief and three colleagues died in a roadside bombing Tuesday in eastern Laghman province.
The extremist Taliban were ousted from power in late 2001 by a US-led invasion of Afghanistan and have since been waging a bloody insurgency which has claimed the lives of thousands of people, mostly militants.
There are more than 55,000 foreign soldiers fighting the growing insurgency alongside Afghan forces.
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