KANDAHAR, Afghan and NATO-led forces cleared out Taliban militants from the outskirts of Kandahar city on Thursday, killing or wounding hundreds of the insurgents, the provincial governor said.
"The Taliban have been cleared totally from Arghandab district," Assadullah Khalid told a news conference in Kandahar city.
"They have suffered hundreds of dead and wounded and many of their casualties are Pakistanis," he said, adding that troops were searching the area for militants who could be hiding in villagers' houses.
On Wednesday, NATO helicopter gunships and troops had blasted the valley of Arghandab in southern Afghanistan in a huge offensive against the Taliban insurgents, many of whom were believed to have escaped from jail in Kandahar city last week.
The spokesman could not confirm the Afghan government's accounts that dozens of militants have been killed but said some foreign civilian contractors of the alliance were wounded during clashes with Taliban fighters.
The operation, which NATO expects to last until the weekend, is aimed at some reported 600 Taliban fighters who have dug in at the Arghandab district just northwest of Kandahar, and comes days after the Taliban freed hundreds of their comrades from the main jail in Kandahar city.
On Wednesday, NATO general Major-General Marc Lessard, commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, said the infiltration of the hundreds of Taliban militants was a tactical success for them and a setback for NATO.
"There are setbacks ... the prison breakout and the Arghandab operation, and there will be setbacks in the future," Lessard told Reuters in an interview.
"They've definitely managed to achieve some kind of tactical success, there's no doubt there," he said.
The commando-style attack on the Kandahar city jail, is seen as part of the Taliban's new guerrilla warfare tactics. The militants have carried out such attacks in several areas of Afghanistan, including at a luxury hotel near the presidential palace in Kabul this year.
Additional Afghan troops were sent by air from Kabul to Kandahar to help national and NATO-led forces in the operation.
Some 800 Afghan government troops, backed by hundreds of mainly Canadian NATO soldiers, are fighting the Taliban insurgents who seized seven villages in the Arghandab district on Monday.
About 5,000 families have fled their homes in Arghandab's lush valley after NATO on Monday warned about the launch of the offensive, a provincial official has said.
A Taliban spokesman said before the assault started that the group had set its sights on Kandahar, the birthplace of the austere Islamic movement which seized power in 1996 and was driven from power by U.S.-led forces in 2001.
The al Qaeda-backed group has made a comeback since 2006 and is largely active in southern and eastern areas along the border region with Pakistan where the militants have some bases and support.
U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government after its leaders refused to hand over al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Despite the presence of more than 60,000 foreign troops and some 150,000 Afghan troops, security has deteriorated since the Taliban's fall and the leaders of the militants are still at large.
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