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34 dead in attack on Afghan base

KANDAHAR: US-led troops battled Taliban rebels who attacked a coalition base in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, leaving an American and a Canadian soldier dead along with at least 32 insurgents, officials said.

The attack was the biggest on a coalition base in months and came about two weeks after the Taliban pledged a new spring offensive.

Militants attacked the base in the Sangin district of Helmand province at about 02:30 am with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. Coalition spokesman Lieutenant Mike Cody said that “the coalition air support included three 500-pound bombs, two 1,000-pound bombs, high-explosive rockets, guided missiles and incendiary rounds”. He said that coalition forces were continuing to pursue enemy forces in the area. According to a coalition statement, the response was “believed to have killed at least a dozen enemy insurgents”.

A coalition statement later said that a further 20 enemy casualties “as part of an early-morning engagement that continued into daylight hours as coalition forces defeated a large enemy element that was attempting to retreat into sanctuaries”. Four coalition troops, three Canadians and an American, as well as an Afghan soldier were wounded in the firefight.

Coalition forces also destroyed two Taliban headquarter buildings containing weapons and bomb-making material during several hours of fighting in insurgency-hit Helmand province.

“Coalition forces destroyed the munitions, which included weapons and improvised explosive device materials, causing multiple secondary explosions and destroying the compound and all enemy military equipment inside,” a statement said. In a separate incident, a suspected Taliban militant was killed in the southern province of Zabul when a bomb he was hiding on a roadside blew up prematurely, police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail said. Agencies

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