January 29, 2003	Wednesday	Ziqa’ad 25,1423

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BAGRAM AIR BASE, Jan 28: At least 18 people were killed in a major battle between US-led coalition forces and some 80 guerillas near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, the US military said on Tuesday.

US and Norwegian warplanes started bombarding the barren Adi Ghar mountain, north of the border town of Spin Boldak, on Monday, in what a US military spokesman said was the biggest US confrontation in Afghanistan for 10 months.

The spokesman said between 250 and 300 US troops, accompanied by a small contingent of Afghan soldiers, continued to fight intermittently with the group on Tuesday. There were no coalition injuries, he added.

A security official at Spin Boldak said the fighting ended in the evening.

The guerillas were believed to be supporters of former Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s anti-government Hezb-i-Islami.

Mr Hekmatyar, who is in hiding and is being sought by US forces, has issued several calls for jihad against US troops.

Fighting broke out when US and Afghan troops came under small arms fire on Monday north of Spin Boldak, 450kms southwest of Kabul, and 100kms southeast of Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold.

One Afghan was killed and another wounded in the initial exchange. A third man was captured and revealed 80 armed men were holed up in nearby caves in the rugged, unpopulated terrain, the US spokesman said.

“Apache helicopters were called in to check the information and estimated about 18 were ... shooting at them with rifles. The Apaches went into attack mode and engaged them.”

Close air support was called in, including Norwegian F-16 fighters, US B1 bombers and a US AC-130 gunship, which pounded the area with cannon fire and 9,00- and 240-kilo bombs.

The Norwegian warplanes dropped two 240-kilo bombs, the first bombing mission by the country since World War Two.

“What we know so far is at least 18 enemy forces have been killed,” the spokesman said, adding that extra forces were drafted in to hunt down the Afghan fighters.

“They are moving through the area of contact trying to get a better feel for what damage was done and are trying to re-establish contact with the enemy forces.”

Saeed Jan, an official in Spin Boldak, put the death toll at five out of “around 70 Taliban fighters”.

The Spin Boldak security official said about at least ten Taliban fighters had been arrested.

Speaking by telephone from Kandahar, another official said the brother of a senior Taliban commander, Hafiz Abdur Rahim, had been captured.

A US official said the fighters were believed to be Hekmatyar loyalists with links to the former Taliban government and the Al Qaeda network.

“We have intelligence in the past that Hekmatyar’s group was trying to operate in that area. The detainee was someone who was willing to be associated with Hekmatyar.”

He added that “the number of casualties makes it the largest engagement since operation Anaconda”.

The US military claims Anaconda, a massive 17-day military operation targeting Al Qaeda cave hideouts in the eastern Shah-i-Kot mountains last March, wiped out the network’s middle-ranking leadership.

Eight US soldiers and three Afghan troops were killed in the late spring offensive.

Troops from the US-dominated 10,000-strong coalition have been hunting down Taliban remnants since their government fell in 2001.

The US official said it was premature to attach any significance to the latest attack.

“The key part is we do our operations with the purpose of catching the enemy in a position where we can have the maximum effect on him while having the minimum effect on us.

“That’s what we have got so far.”

MINISTER REPLACED: : Afghanistan has replaced its unpopular interior minister, Taj Mohammed Wardak, appointing a former resistance commander in his place, government officials said on Tuesday.

Fazel Akbar, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said Ali Ahmad Jalali, a commander in the fight against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, would give much-needed military skills to his country.

“Security in Afghanistan remains a very important issue for the government and since Jalali is an experienced military general, we decided to bring about this change,” Mr Akbar said.

He said Wardak would be reassigned as an advisory minister for tribal affairs and a member of Afghanistan’s security council commission.—AFP