60 insurgents killed in Afghan battle

M. Karim Faiez and Laura King,Special to The Times

KABUL -- Taliban fighters made an unusual bid to capture a provincial capital, Afghan and Western officials said Sunday, a failed assault that nonetheless underscored their heightened boldness and ambition in recent months.

Hundreds of Taliban militants took part in the multi-pronged attack that began late Saturday against Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where British troops maintain a regional garrison. NATO-led forces carried out airstrikes to stave off the assault, which left more than 60 insurgents dead in fighting that continued into the early hours on Sunday, according to Afghan and Western military officials. Separately, about 40 militants were killed in fighting elsewhere in Helmand province after briefly seizing a district center, Afghan authorities said.

Until recently, the Taliban and allied militant groups generally eschewed frontal assaults on Western military installations or reasonably well-guarded Afghan towns, because such attacks present the far better-armed Western forces with an opportunity to inflict significant casualties. But lately, the insurgents appear to have concluded that the risk is worth the chance to score a major propaganda victory by overrunning a base or seizing a major town. Such attacks also suggest that Taliban commanders feel confident they have a sufficient supply of foot soldiers to stage such costly assaults.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the fighting in Lashkar Gah broke out Saturday evening after hundreds of insurgents were observed massing on the outskirts of the town of about 85,000 people on the banks of the Helmand River. Soon afterward, the militants launched a volley of mortars against an Afghan army outpost, then attacked the provincial capital from three sides.

The NATO-led force responded with an airstrike in which it said "multiple enemy forces" were killed. Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, put the number of insurgent dead at 62, an estimate Western military officials later agreed with.

"If the insurgents planned a spectacular attack prior to the winter, this was a spectacular failure," Canadian Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, an ISAF spokesman, said in a statement.