World

Taliban Lose Ground, Strike Back

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 5, 2001 / 11:04 AM EDT / CBS

Afghanistan opposition forces said on Tuesday they had ousted the ruling Taliban from the strategic township of Yakawlang in the central province of Bamiyan after fierce fighting.

But the sides issued contradictory reports about fighting in the far north of Afghanistan, with the opposition denying Taliban claims they had captured a key area needed to mount an attack on the main remaining opposition stronghold of Badakhshan.

Opposition spokesman Mohammad Habeel said fighters poured into the township of Yakawlang from the west side and flushed out the Taliban after a heavy overnight battle.

"Fighting has intensified and since early morning the Taliban have failed so far to take this place back," Habeel said.

He added that the Taliban had suffered a high death toll and were forced to flee to surrounding mountains, but the purist Islamic group had launched counterattacks, including aerial bombardments.

Details of the clashes were sketchy, with both sides denying each other's claims. The fighting, which involved aerial bombardment and artillery exchanges, was the heaviest in Afghanistan in at least a month.

The Taliban Islamic militia controls 95 percent of the country and is fighting the opposition to capture the remaining five percent. The civil war, combined with the worst drought in 30 years, has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and given Afghanistan the world's worst refugee problem.

Opposition leaders said at least 100 Taliban fighters died in the fighting Monday and Tuesday and that their soldiers had captured the strategic Yakawlang district in central Bamiyan province.

But Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the Taliban's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the opposition was exaggerating

"They're in the habit of making such claims," he said on Tuesday. Taliban officials did not give casualty figures.

A Taliban official who asked not to be named, however, confirmed that the Islamic militia had lost Yakawlang. But he said the Taliban on Monday and Tuesday captured the Chal district in northern Takhar province.

Mohammad Habil, an opposition spokesman in Takhar, confirmed that Taliban fighter planes bombarded the Chal area three times on Tuesday, but said that the Taliban claim of having captured all of Chal were false.

He said that "only two small villages around Chal" fell to the Taliban, who lost 40 soldiers in the fighting.

Meanwhile, about 700 opposition fighters, armed with rocket launchers and automatic rifles, ambushed a Taliban contingent in Yakawlang late Monday, capturing the district and 20 Taliban soldiers, Mohammed Muaqek, an opposition leader, said.

The fighting killed 60 Taliban soldiers, he said. The opposition said none of its fighters died in the clashes.

"The Taliban have been feeling too powerful. We are forcing them back," Muaqek said by telephone from his base in northern Afghanistan.

Muaqek said Monday's opposition victory has advanced the opposition alliance to within 3miles of Bamiyan city, which he said is now within the opposition's reach.