NARAY, Afghanistan – U.S. soldiers and warplanes drove off an insurgent attack on a new American base early Wednesday, reportedly killing 19 militants in an area where rebels are trying to resist a push by coalition troops into remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
In the volatile south of the country, wracked by the bloodiest fighting in nearly five years, suspected Taliban rebels hanged a 70-year-old woman and her son from a tree, accusing them of spying for President Hamid Karzai’s government, officials said.
Meanwhile, Karzai, whose popularity has declined because of slow progress in reconstructing the war-battered country and poor security, signaled in an interview that he won’t run for president again in elections slated for 2009.
The raid on the U.S. base at Kamdesh in the eastern province of Nuristan – one of the country’s wildest regions – was staged by extremists likely belonging to the Hezb-e-Islami militant group, who attacked from three directions out of forests using rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, the U.S. military said.
Several hundred soldiers at the base, which lies in a small town but backs onto a sheer mountain face, returned fire with mortars and small arms before jets dropped four 500-pound bombs, ending the clash that lasted more than two hours.
“This is the first large, coordinated attack on our base since we arrived three weeks ago,” said Lt. Joel Rees, 26, of Memphis, Tenn. “When light broke, we found large crater holes from the RPG attack throughout the base and several tents had bullet holes.”
Maj. Tom Sutton of the 3rd Battalion, 71st Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, said at least 19 guerrillas were killed, describing the battle as the most ferocious he had seen in the area. A coalition statement said two U.S. soldiers were wounded but returned to duty.
The region is a stronghold of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade Afghan warlord whose Hezb-e-Islami faction has ties with Osama bin Laden and now fights Karzai’s government. His fighters are also supported by loyalists of the Taliban regime, which was driven from power in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces for harboring the al-Qaida leader.
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