July 27, 2007	Friday	Rajab 11, 1428

KABUL, July 26: Afghan and US-led forces killed more than 50 Taliban in a 12-hour battle in the nation's opium-growing heartland, while a soldier and 10 rebels died in separate incidents, officials said on Thursday.

The Nato soldier was killed in the restive south, bringing to 121 the number of foreign soldiers killed this year, Nato spokesman John Thomas said.

The British soldier was involved in an operation to remove the insurgent Taliban from the Gereshk valley in insurgency-hit Helmand provice, the defence ministry said in London. Details of how he died were not available.

During the lengthy battle in the opium-growing region, coalition warplanes were called in to bomb rebel hideouts in the most intense clash, which broke out late Wednesday, also in Helmand, the US-led coalition said in a statement.

“More than 50 insurgents were confirmed killed, with an unknown number wounded. Sixteen Taliban compounds, three enemy motorcycles and five enemy trucks were destroyed as well,” the statement said.

One coalition soldier suffered a broken hand during the battle, while there were no civilian casualties, it added.

The ultra-Islamic Taliban launched a bloody insurgency after they were toppled from power by US-led forces and Afghan warlords following the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of people have died since then.

The Taliban were not immediately available to comment on the official casualty figures.

Helmand has seen some of the most bitter fighting, particularly in rebel-infested Musa Qala district, near the scene of the latest battle, where the coalition says 160 militants have been killed since Sunday.

The province produces most of Afghanistan's opium, the source of the heroin that reportedly funds much of the Taliban's operations

The fighting erupted on Wednesday night after Taliban militants attacked a joint US-led and Afghan National Army patrol “using heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms weapons,” said the statement.

The troops called in air support, and coalition planes dropped two bombs on the buildings judged to contain the most insurgents. Secondary blasts suggested there was a large cache of explosives inside, it said. During the battle, insurgents continually reinforced their fighters using a system of wadis, or riverbeds, linking the area of the fighting to nearby Musa Qala, it added.

The coalition said intelligence suggested there was a heavy concentration of Taliban in Musa Qala and that the insurgents would stay “stay and defend the area rather than use their normal hit-and-run tactics.” Meanwhile, in neighbouring Kandahar, the province where the Taliban first rose to power in the 1990s, rebels attacked a police post overnight, sparking heavy fighting, provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib said.

“Ten Taliban bodies were left on the battlefield and four were wounded. An Afghan policeman was also martyred and eight were hurt,” said Saqib of the clash in Maruf district.

In a separate incident at about the same time the insurgents attacked security forces in Kandahar's Khakraiz district, leaving three policemen wounded and causing an unknown number of Taliban casualties, said Saqib.—AFP