Four Taliban fighters killed, two captured in skirmish

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- At least four suspected members of the deposed Taliban militia were killed and two others captured after a gun battle in southeastern Afghanistan with soldiers from the nation's new army, a government official said Thursday.

The soldiers confronted about 60 fighters during a routine patrol on Monday in the area of Balai Zhar, about 75 miles southeast of Kandahar, said Khalid Pashtoon, a top government spokesman in Kandahar.

The Afghan soldiers suffered no casualties, Pashtoon said.

He said the fighters were led by Hafiz Abdul Rahim, well-known in the area for his promotion of the Taliban. Rahim and the remaining fighters fled into the hills east of Balai Zhar near the Pakistani border, he said.

Pashtoon would not say how the fighters were identified as Taliban nor where the captured men were being held.

"Hafiz Abdul Rahim had been in the area before to promote the Taliban," Pashtoon said.

Kandahar was the stronghold of the Taliban, the rigorously Islamic regime that was ousted from power in late 2001 by a U.S.-led military coalition.

Bala Gul, an Afghan trader based in the border town of Spinboldak, near Balai Zhar, said Rahim and his men would come to the area regularly.

They called on people to launch a jihad, or holy war, against the current Afghan government and pasted pamphlets with similar messages on mosques in the area, Gul said.