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Troops kill 20 Afghan insurgents: US military
Kabul (AFP) April 4, 2009 Afghan and US-led troops killed 20 insurgents in ground fighting and air strikes in the southern province of Helmand, the US military said Saturday. The battle erupted Friday in the strategic Kajaki district after a patrol was ambushed by numerous men in a "known Taliban stronghold", it said in a statement. "The combined forces returned fire with small-arms fire and called for close air support destroying six enemy fighting positions and killing 20 insurgents," it said. Insurgents in Kajaki are known to be heavily involved in bomb-making and weapons smuggling, and attacks on troops, the statement said. They were also involved in narcotics, it said. Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, most of it in the desert province of Helmand which shares a largely open border with Pakistan which militants cross to join the insurgency. Kajaki district is the site of one of Afghanistan's largest hydropower dams, a Soviet-era facility that fell into disrepair during the country's decades of conflict and which the United States is working to rehabilitate. Troops control the area around the Kajaki but most of the district is known to be heavily influenced by the Taliban as are large swathes of southern Afghanistan. Friday's battle was one of a series in the past week that the military says has inflicted heavy insurgent casualties, with 20 reported killed in Helmand on Wednesday and 30 in the Helmand-Uruzgan area on Monday. Southern Afghanistan is the main battlefield of the insurgency, led by hardcore Taliban fighters whom commanders say have some support from Al-Qaeda. Responding to calls from military commanders for more troops to the fight, US President Barack Obama in February announced he would send 17,000 extra US soldiers to Afghanistan, most of them headed to the south. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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