Afghan Firefight Kills 16

Raising fresh doubts about security in this troubled Afghan capital, gunmen assaulted a hilltop army post Wednesday, touching off a three-hour gun battle that killed 16 people on Kabul’s southern outskirts.

The firefight came a day after U.S. soldiers killed four men in a car in eastern Afghanistan. That incident was in the same area of Konar province where Americans killed two men Monday, and Afghan leaders said the U.S. military operations had made local people edgy and angry.

Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier was wounded Wednesday while on patrol south of the eastern city of Khowst near the Pakistani border, according to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The soldier’s name and condition were not released, but Myers told reporters at the Pentagon that he was wounded in the chest.

Wednesday’s battle near Kabul began about 7 a.m. when guerrillas armed with AK-47 assault rifles rushed an army post on a hill in the Bagrami district, about six miles south of the center of the capital, said Col. Haji Rashid, a local police commander.

The army commander for Kabul, Bismillah Khan, said his soldiers chased the attackers as they retreated to a nearby mountain, then surrounded and killed them.

Khan’s deputy told government television that 12 attackers and three soldiers died. In addition, a civilian apparently caught in the cross-fire died, said Maj. Angela Herbert, a spokeswoman for the multinational peacekeeping force that patrols Kabul.

Khan said the assailants were “Arabs and Pakistanis,” and his deputy told national television that they were members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Neither said how this had been determined.