U.S. Attacks Taliban Camp in Afghanistan

The firefight erupted Tuesday night after a U.S.-led patrol came across a group of militants, American spokesman Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said. The troops then called in warplanes ``for a show of force,'' he added.

``When that did not work, (the planes) used precision ordnance,'' Mansager told reporters. ``Based on the fact that the engagement ended immediately after that, it would appear that it was successful.''

An Afghan commander said the gunbattle was in the Arghistan district of Kandahar province. But Mansager put it across the ill-defined frontier of neighboring Zabul province, about 120 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul.

Provincial government spokesman Khalid Pashtun estimated that eight militants - including a local Taliban commander, Qari Mohammed Ali - were killed and four injured. Afghan commanders said earlier that as many as 20 Taliban were killed. No U.S. casualties were reported.

Troops were searching the area Wednesday for enemy casualties, Mansager said.

Mansager said he had no information on the involvement of Afghan troops in the fighting. But local military commander Khan Mohammed said the airstrike followed an assault by about 150 of his men on a Taliban camp on a rough mountainside and three of his men were injured in the three-hour gunbattle before the American planes struck.

The clash comes as American-led forces and insurgents have stepped up operations in the spring, fueling a spiral of violence that has killed more than 350 people this year and cast a shadow over plans for national elections in September.

Some 20,000 U.S. forces, up from 11,000 a few months ago, are in Afghanistan to hunt down supporters of the former Taliban regime and their al-Qaida allies who have threatened to sabotage the polls.

Mansager also said a U.S. patrol was attacked Monday in Deh Rawood, the capital of Uruzgan province, 250 miles southwest of Kabul, where Marines are based, but no casualties were reported. U.S. forces detained three suspects.

Separately, a bomb or old mine exploded near a United Nations vehicle as it crossed a bridge in Taloqan, northern Afghanistan, on Wednesday, officials said. No one was injured.

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