July 29, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 28, 1424

KABUL, July 28: Suspected Taliban fighters ambushed and killed six Afghan soldiers in southern Afghanistan following an attack on a passenger jet, officials said on Monday, after a US military warning that extremists were likely to launch attacks.

Abdul Rahman Sabir, security commander of Helmand province, said the Afghan troops were attacked on Sunday as they patrolled the province’s desert region of Gereshk following reports of theft and robbery.

“Some unknown armed men shot dead these six soldiers who were on patrol. They are not police but were there to help police find the thieves,” Rahman said from the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, 530 kilometres, southwest of Kabul.

“It is clear to the world that attacks like this are the work of the Taliban,” he said when asked who was responsible for the killings.

Five Afghan police were killed by suspected Taliban two weeks ago in neighbouring Kandahar province’s Ghorak district, 40 kilometres northeast of Gereshk.

PLANE HIT: In a separate incident, unknown attackers shot at and hit an Ariana Afghan Airlines Boeing 727 jet shortly after takeoff on Saturday from the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, an airport official said.

The plane landed safely in the Afghan capital with minor damage and no injuries to passengers, Mazar-i-Sharif airport second deputy head Abdul Haq said.

Just over a week ago US soldiers killed up to 24 Taliban in a failed ambush in Kandahar province near the Pakistan border in what a military spokesman called the biggest attack on US troops in months.

Colonel Rodney Davis on Saturday said coalition forces expected Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to resort to “terror” attacks after their failure on the battlefield.

“They tend not to want to take us on head-on and this is when they typically resort to acts of terrorism: criminal acts, killing people in mosques, burning up schools.”

The deputy governor of southeast Zabul province, Mullah Mohammad Omar, Monday said there had been an increase in Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan.

Taliban fighters in April seized control of part of Zabul before they were routed by Afghan reinforcements.—AFP