Troops Clash With Taliban

British and Afghan forces battled Taliban holdouts Thursday after repelling an insurgent attack on a police headquarters a day earlier in a southern Afghan town that left at least 19 militants dead, a local official said.

Coalition forces also killed a local Taliban commander and captured two extremists in a separate clash in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of foreign troops are trying crush a resurgent militant campaign, the U.S. military said Thursday.

Around midday Wednesday, about 200 militants riding in four-wheel-drive vehicles poured into Nawzad, a town in Helmand province, and set up positions around a police compound where Afghan soldiers and police, along with British troops, were based, provincial official Ghulam Muhiddin said.

British spokesman Capt. Drew Gibson said coalition aircraft bombed two Taliban targets in Nawzad, including a machine-gun position, which was destroyed.