NATO-Afghan Raids Kill 40 Suspected Militants

NATO and Afghan forces killed more than 40 militants in raids that destroyed insurgent hide-outs and a bomb-making factory, pushing the toll of Taliban dead from a weeklong offensive in the volatile south past 330, NATO said Saturday. The alliance suffered its sixth fatality.

The operation began Sept. 2 in Panjwayi, where hundreds of militants had mobilized 15 miles west of the main southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s longtime stronghold.

Security forces have pounded insurgents in Panjwayi with airstrikes, artillery and mortar fire in one of the most intense military confrontations since the U.S.-led campaign that toppled the Taliban government nearly five years ago.

The anti-insurgent blitz comes amid concerns that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization lacks enough troops to succeed. In Poland, Canadian Gen. Ray Henault, chief of NATO’s military committee, said he would ask the alliance’s 26 member states Monday to provide as many as 2,500 more troops.

NATO, which took command in the south Aug. 1 from a U.S.-led coalition, has deployed about 8,000 mostly British, Canadian and Dutch forces. It has about 20,000 forces nationwide.

In Kabul, the capital, thousands of people, including President Hamid Karzai, attended a memorial ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the assassination of mujahedin leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated by suspected Al Qaeda operatives. He led the resistance to the Taliban after the Islamic militia seized power in 1996.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials reiterated that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who is on the Pentagon’s most wanted list, is not living in their country. “There has been no evidence about the presence of Mullah Omar in Pakistan,” the government said in a statement released in response to a CNN report that he is living there.