KABUL: Overnight fighting between Afghan police and insurgents in southern Afghanistan left 11 militants dead, officials said. Meanwhile, a NATO pilot was injured after his jet crashed following take off in the same region. Insurgents attacked the police post in Paktika province Wednesday evening and fighting raged for several hours, said Gen. Dawlat Khan, the provincial police chief. Eventually, international forces called in an air strike to help the officers. Eleven militants but no police were killed in the fighting, he said.In the southern Kandahar province, meanwhile, a British jet crashed on take off Thursday due to mechanical failure, said Lt. Cmdr Christopher Hall, a spokesman for the NATO-led force. The pilot was wounded after ejecting from the aircraft in Kandahar airfield, he said. ``There were no other passengers on board. At present we are not aware of any other casualties,'' Hall said.In another incident, police officers were again the target of an attack Thursday morning, when a suicide car bomber struck a police station in Kandahar province's Spin boldak district. Gen. Abdul Raziq, the border police district commander, said four officers were wounded in the blast. The Interior Ministry said a civilian was also wounded. The explosion killed the car bomber but there were no other deaths, Raziq said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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