U.S. Kills 9 in Afghan Fighting

U.S. snipers killed nine suspected Taliban militants in the Afghan mountains bordering Pakistan, the military said Saturday, marking one of the American forces’ deadliest engagements in months.

The military would not say whether the clash marked the start of a promised spring offensive to capture Osama bin Laden, though a spokesman said the fighting began when as many as 40 suspected Taliban tried to flank the position held by the Americans and their Afghan army allies.

Over the last two weeks, U.S. commanders have pledged to take what they call a hammer-and-anvil approach for the spring thaw into summer, with the crucial support of Pakistani troops on their side of the border with Afghanistan.

Under that plan, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region where terrorism suspects are thought to be hiding becomes the anvil against which those suspects would be hammered, the military said.

The Friday operation in which the Taliban fighters were killed involved a roughly 10-member U.S. special operations group, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said. It occurred near Orgun, 20 miles west of the Pakistani border. There were no U.S. or Afghan casualties.

Meanwhile Saturday, gunmen shot and killed an Afghan aid worker as he drove home from work in a restive southern province, a senior official said.

Dr. Isha Khan, 33, director of the Red Crescent Society in the southern province of Zabol, was attacked about 5 p.m. on a road between the town of Qalat and his home village of Nokhaiz, 10 miles to the north.

Khan’s brother, also in the vehicle, was unhurt, Gov. Khial Mohammed Husseini said. Husseini said the circumstances of the attack and the identities of the gunmen were unknown. He said troops had been sent to investigate.

Rebels of the former ruling Taliban have targeted aid workers over the last year in an apparent bid to undermine the U.S.-backed central government and reconstruction efforts in the war-battered country.

Zabol is one of the most volatile regions. On Friday, gunmen killed a Turkish engineer and an Afghan soldier on a highway there.