Toll Rises in South Afghan Fighting

Afghan and U.S. troops backed by warplanes blasted suspected Taliban hide-outs for a second day Wednesday, killing scores of militants in one of the fiercest battles since the U.S. invaded in 2001, officials said.

Gen. Ayoub Salangi, police chief of Kandahar province, said 76 guerrillas had been killed since Tuesday.

“Their bodies and their weapons are scattered all over Mian Nishin,” he said.

Salangi had sent 400 troops in pursuit of militants who took over Mian Nishin district last week and executed its police chief.

Two Afghan soldiers died and six U.S. soldiers were wounded in the operation where Kandahar, Zabol and Oruzgan provinces meet. U.S. A-10 aircraft, British Harrier jets and U.S. Apache helicopters took part in the offensive.

“This is the heaviest bombing and fighting I have seen since the fall of the Taliban,” said Gen. Salim Khan, Kandahar’s deputy police chief.

He said 30 guerrillas were captured.

Salangi said the fighting had spread to other areas Wednesday, and there were unconfirmed reports of more dead elsewhere. Khan said that hundreds of insurgents had been in the mountains and that many were trying to flee the area.

A U.S. spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara, said AC-130 gunships and other aircraft were still attacking rebels and having a “devastating effect on their forces.”

“We are not letting up on the enemy and will continue to pursue them until the fighting stops,” he said.

Hundreds of people have died in a surge in militant violence in recent months, raising concerns about the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, the next big step in Afghanistan’s difficult path to democracy.

Afghan and U.S. forces have reported killing more than 100 insurgents in this southwestern region in the last week.