Dozens of Taliban killed in assault

QALAT, Afghanistan - The U.S. military said Saturday that a weeklong campaign of bombing and intense ground battles on the craggy mountain ridges of southern Afghanistan have killed dozens of Taliban holdouts.

U.S. special operations forces and hundreds of allied Afghan soldiers were pressing their assault, taking several strategic peaks and laying siege to positions of the hard-line Islamic militant group. Two U.S. soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

A provincial intelligence chief said that for the first time in the recent assault, U.S. planes operated during daylight Saturday, in support of a joint U.S.-Afghan operation that has met stiff resistance.

After two nights of bombing, the planes pounded the Chinaran mountains and two nearby areas in southern Zabul province by day, Khalil Hotak told the Associated Press from his command center in Qalat, 45 miles south of the fighting.

"Our forces are on the tops of the mountains. They have laid siege to the area and the Taliban hideouts," Hotak said.

This week's fighting follows a recent surge in military action by the Taliban, which has staged deadly attacks on Afghan forces, officials and aid workers in an apparent bid to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The assaults have created new doubts about how much progress has been made by the U.S.-led effort to secure and rebuild the war-battered nation. The violence also raised serious concerns that the increasingly well-organized Taliban is regrouping after its regime was toppled by U.S.-led forces in late 2001.

Pakistani paramilitary troops detained 26 suspected militants on suspicion they were involved in recent Taliban attacks in Afghanistan.

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