AFGHANISTAN Intense fighting kills 41 Taliban

Officials were concerned about attacks on the regional capital.
SARTAK, Afghanistan (AP) -- Security forces backed by U.S.-led coalition helicopters attacked a suspected Taliban hideout in southeastern Afghanistan, sparking an intense battle that killed 41 rebels and six police, a senior official said Saturday.
The fighting was some of the heaviest reported after Taliban threats to intensify attacks as the warmer weather melts snow on mountain passes used by the militants.
Villagers said they appealed in vain for between 50 and 60 militants to leave the area days before the clashes erupted Friday in Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold near the border with Pakistan.
"Our elders had asked them [Taliban] to go away because we knew that one day American helicopters will come and drop bombs," Faiz Ullah told The Associated Press in Sartak, a village surrounded by blooming opium poppy fields and the site of the heaviest fighting.
Provincial Gov. Asadullah Khalid said the assault was based on intelligence that the militants were preparing to attack the regional capital of Kandahar.
After the firing had died down Saturday and the situation appeared under control, security forces were searching for some Taliban who had fled, he said.
Body count
"We saw the 41 bodies of Taliban at the end of the fighting, but we collected only 11," Khalid said, refusing to elaborate on why the other bodies were not retrieved. He also said six police were killed.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody said coalition forces provided AH-64 Apache helicopters, which fired rockets in support of Afghan ground forces, but he declined comment on casualty figures, saying it was primarily an Afghan operation.
Ullah said Afghan police surrounded Sartak, about 25 miles southwest of Kandahar, on Friday morning and asked villagers to evacuate, but some were still inside their homes when the fighting broke out.
The 55-year-old villager saw only two militants and four Afghan policemen killed in Sartak but said other Taliban may have been killed in nearby villages.
He also said his 19-year-old sister, Pari Bibi, died in a gunbattle between Afghan forces and militants, and two other villagers, including a 10-year-old girl, were wounded. But it was unclear who was responsible for those casualties.
On Saturday, villagers returned to their homes. Three houses were badly damaged, and one local farmer, Mohammad Naseem, 40, moaned that his poppy crop was ruined because of a 16-foot-wide crater in the field.
No security forces could be seen in the area Saturday, despite official claims that the hunt for Taliban fighters was continuing.