3 Americans, 2 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan

Associated Press Writers Noor Khan And Heidi Vogt,

Fri May 1, 2009, 4:35 pm ET

KABUL –

Three Americans and two other international troops were killed Friday in an attack in eastern Afghanistan, officials said.

 Taliban fighters attacked Afghan and international forces Friday with rocket-propelled grenades and guns, NATO forces said in a statement. The troops called in air support, forcing the Taliban fighters to withdraw. They are being pursued, the statement said.

Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, confirmed that three of the dead service members were Americans. The nationalities of the other two were not immediately known because NATO typically waits for countries to release such information.

Taliban fighters have vowed to increase ambushes and other attacks as an additional 21,000 U.S. troops flood into Afghanistan this summer in an attempt to stem the group's resurgence and bolster security for August presidential elections.

In a sign that electioneering itself is likely to be chaotic, Afghanistan's top vice president broke away from the president to join a competing ticket, a spokesman for the ticket said Friday.

Former warlord Gul Agha Sherzai has snagged First Vice President Ahmad Zia Masood as his top deputy in his run against President Hamid Karzai, said Gul Khalid Pushtoon, a lawmaker serving as spokesman for Sherzai.

Sherzai, now governor of eastern Nangarhar province, plans to file official papers on Saturday, Pushtoon said.

Sherzai, who met with President Barack Obama when he visited Afghanistan in July, has a mixed reputation. He helped the U.S. oust the Taliban from southern Kandahar province in the first push against the militants, but he has also been accused of heavy-handed rule and corruption in the aftermath.

A government spokesman, Waheed Omar, said he had not yet been informed of Masood's decision but that the government would not stand in his way.

"Masood is still the vice president of Afghanistan, but if he has decided that joining a different team will help, I don't think the president will have a problem because that is his constitutional right."

Spokesmen for Masood could not immediately be reached for comment.

Sherzai had in the past been a strong supporter of Karzai but Pushtoon said they are running against the president because they don't believe he's popular enough with the citizenry to hold onto the job.

A spike in violence and the accompanying civilian death toll has greatly eroded Karzai's popularity over the past year, along with conservatives arguing that he is puppet of Western powers.

"We think that President Karzai will not win the election, so therefore we want to keep the leadership in the region as well as improve the economy of the country," Pushtoon said.

Three Afghan army soldiers and 15 Taliban fighters also died in clashes in the south and east Friday, U.S. military and Afghan officials said. No international casualties were reported in those incidents.

Associated Press Writer Amir Shah contributed to this report.

US: 15 Taliban fighters killed in Afghanistan in attack on convoy

Posted : Fri, 01 May 2009 11:35:44 GMT Author : DPA

Kabul -

At least 15 suspected Taliban fighters were killed when they attacked a convoy of Afghan and US-led coalition troops in southern Afghanistan, the US military said Friday. The Afghan-coalition forces returned fire, resulting in a several-hour battle in Zabul province in which 12 militants were also injured, it said without mentioning casualties on the Afghan-coalition side.

The fundamentalist Islamist movement on Thursday announced it had begun a new countrywide offensive aimed at countering the arrival in the coming months of US and NATO reinforcements.

Mullah Brodar, deputy to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, said the new operation, dubbed Nasrat, which means victory, is similar to the Taliban's spring offensives in previous years and would include an increased number of suicide attacks, ambushes and offensive assaults.

But Taliban fighters also vowed to expand their battleground from the restive southern and eastern parts of the country, where it is most active, to new areas.

With the deployment of 21,000 additional US soldiers and around 5,000 NATO forces, there would be more than 90,000 international troops deployed from 42 nations in Afghanistan by this summer.