U.S. Pounds Afghan Rebel Hideout

[David]

AP


American warplanes pounded a suspected Taliban safe haven in the mountainsides of southern Afghanistan in an assault that left up to 60 insurgents and five policemen dead and five U.S. soldiers wounded, officials said.

Two American CH-47 helicopters were damaged during 11 hours of fighting Tuesday at a rebel "safe haven," a U.S. military statement said. One made an emergency landing before it was repaired, while the other managed to fly back to a nearby coalition base.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said about 40 rebels had been killed, but Gen. Salim Khan, commander of about 400 Afghan policemen who also took part in the fighting, said his men had recovered the bodies of 60 suspected insurgents.

Some 30 militants were captured, including eight who were wounded, he said.

Khan said that in addition to the five slain Afghan police officers, three were also injured in the gunbattle on the border between the southern provinces of Kandahar and Zabul.

"There are hundreds of Taliban in camps in the mountains. My officers have been spotting them and then the information is used by the American aircraft to bomb them," Khan said. "Many of the rebels have started to flee the area."

The military statement said, "Coalition warplanes and attack helicopters were hammering enemy positions throughout the evening."

O'Hara said the "operation to go after enemy safe havens is ongoing."

"We are not letting up on the enemy and will continue to pursue them until the fighting stops. Coalition and Afghan forces will continue to defeat these militants for as long as necessary to ensure the people of Afghanistan remain free of oppression and tyranny," he said.

The names of the U.S. wounded were withheld pending notification of their families.

Also in Afghanistan, some provincial governors and police chiefs are suspected of involvement in the country's illegal opium and heroin trade, which has ballooned to account for nearly 90 percent of the world's supply, the counternarcotics minister said Wednesday.

Despite the suspicions, none of the officials are being investigated because of a "lack of evidence against them," Minister Habibullah Qaderi said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Only two "low-level" drug smugglers have been convicted this year, and they were sentenced to 18 months each in prison, he said.

"We know ... big people are involved, but we need proof," the minister said. "What we hear from the people ... they say as far as governors, chiefs of police, they facilitate ... and maybe some are directly involved."

"It has been said many times by the Ministry of Interior, it has been said by the people, but so far nobody has proved anything against anybody. If you want to take someone to a court of law, you have to have proof," he added.

Qaderi declined to name the officials who are suspected.