SARTAK, Afghanistan — Afghan security forces, backed by U.S. helicopters and Canadian soldiers, fought a large number of Taliban rebels in a battle on Friday that ran through several villages in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar Province, officials said Saturday.
The fighting was some of the heaviest in months, and at least 41 rebels and six Afghan policemen were reported killed.
The rebels have emerged in large numbers in recent weeks, moving through villages across the southern regions as their leaders have announced a spring offensive against foreign forces and their Afghan government allies. Before that, large concentrations of Taliban fighters had not been seen for months, as the militants switched last summer to the guerrilla tactics of roadside bombs and suicide attacks.
Friday's operation was largely an Afghan one, part of new tactics under the Canadian command, which took over from U.S. troops in Kandahar Province in February. After reports came in that rebels were concentrating in western Kandahar, Afghan police and some Afghan army units went into the area at dawn on Friday, backed by U.S. Apache attack helicopters and supported on the ground by a company of Canadian troops.
The Afghans fought for three hours before calling in support, said Lt. Col. Ian Hope, commander of the Canadian force in Kandahar who was at the scene. Canadian troops provided a cordon to block the escape of the Taliban rebels, he said. The U.S. helicopters, according to villagers, fired on farmhouse compounds, wounding civilians, damaging homes and killing animals.
The governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, said in a news briefing on Saturday that 41 rebels had been killed. Six Afghan policemen were killed — including four that may have possibly been killed by fire from the U.S. helicopters — and nine police were wounded, Afghan officials said. At least one Afghan woman was killed in the crossfire, and two more civilians were injured, officials and villagers said. No coalition soldiers were hurt.
Villagers confirmed that a large group of Taliban fighters had suddenly appeared several days ago. In a telephone call from his base at Kandahar airfield, Hope said that the Taliban group was 50 to 60 strong and that the police were still hunting for remnants of it in the villages.
The group represented just part of Taliban guerrillas who had moved into western Kandahar Province, he said.
The first large groups of rebels emerged last month in neighboring Helmand Province. One group attacked a coalition forward operating base in the poppy-growing district of Sangin last month, forcing a battle that killed an American and a Canadian soldier. The Taliban group from that attack may be the same one that arrived in the past few days in Panjwai and Zhare districts of Kandahar, near the fighting on Friday, Khaled said.
Villagers who were caught in the crossfire on Friday in the village of Sartak confirmed that a large number of Taliban had come into the area several days earlier but said that they had not come into the village itself. They angrily denounced the police and the coalition for coming to fight them in the village and causing civilian casualties and damage to homes.
Muhammad Nasim, 40, a farmer and father of nine, said U.S. helicopters rocketed his farmhouse compound and peppered the fields around. At least four rockets hit the compound, killing some of his animals but not hitting the room where his family was taking shelter, he said. "I am a poor man, and I built this room with a lot of difficulty, but the Americans came and destroyed it," he said. Mentioning President Hamid Karzai, Nasim said, "Karzai promised us development, instead they are bombing us."
Another villager, Hafizullah, 35, who uses only one name, said his sister Bibi Pari, 19, had been shot dead by Afghan police as she fled across a field with his two children. As she fell in the wheat field, the children, a boy of 12 and a girl of 5, crawled on their stomachs through the field until they reached a neighbor's house, he said.
Zaher Shah, 21, was shot in the stomach as he rose from his prayers at the village mosque at midday. "There were hundreds of Taliban moving around the area," he said. "I saw 30 to 40 Taliban one day. They had heavy machine guns and very new Chinese Kalashnikovs," he said.
He said the Taliban had visited the mosques in the region, although not their village, and asked people to bury any fighters killed in battle so the "infidels" would not take their bodies.