September 7, 2003	Sunday	Rajab 9, 1424

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BAGRAM AIR BASE, Sept 6: The US military on Saturday said it was hunting down fighters, who were trying to re-establish Taliban rule.

A US military spokesman warned that militants were trying to overthrow Karzai’s government.

“We believe that strategically the anti-coalition forces seek to remove the existing national government of Afghanistan and re- establish a Taliban regime,” Col Rodney Davis told reporters at the US-led coalition’s Bagram Air Base headquarters 50 kilometres north of Kabul.

The militants were trying to seek de facto control of certain provinces and kill or wound coalition forces, Col Davis said after a week-long offensive.

Around 1,000 Afghan soldiers supported by 300 US troops and aircraft have been engaged in a major operation against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda bases in the mountains of Daychopan district, in Zabul.

Gardez attacked: Three rockets landed near a coalition forces base near Gardez on Saturday, a US military spokesman in Kabul said.

“There were no reported injuries to coalition soldiers or damage to equipment or property,” spokesman Maj Ralph Marino said in a statement.

The attack occurred a day before the U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is due to arrive in Kabul, from where he will visit a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Gardez, said Afghan presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin.

In the province of Paktika (south of Paktia province), coalition troops are continuing an offensive in Shkin district, according to Marino.—AFP/dpa