AFGHANISTAN - Aug 20 - Scores Of Taliban Die In Major Clash.

Heavy fighting flares in southern Afghanistan when Taliban insurgents attack a district center and fought for hours against Afghan police troops and army and NATO troops. Scores of Taliban fighters and five men from the Afghan security forces were killed as NATO forces called in artillery and airstrikes, Afghan and NATO officials said. [A British soldier was killed and three others wounded, the British Defense Ministry said. [The soldier, who has not been identified by officials, died as a result of wounds sustained during fighting in the north of Helmand Province on Sunday, a ministry spokesman said, adding that three other British soldiers had received minor wounds. [Britain has about 3,600 troops in the volatile province of Helmand as part of a NATO force and has announced plans to increase the number to 4,500 soldiers by October. The death brought to 20 the number of British soldiers killed since they deployed to Afghanistan in November 2001.] The fighting occurred in Panjwai district, just outside Kandahar, the main city of southern Afghanistan and the former spiritual capital of the Taliban regime. It began when Taliban fighters attacked the local district office Aug 19 afternoon, as Afghans were celebrating Independence Day, and fighting raged until early Aug 20 morning, Major Quentin Innis, a spokesman for the NATO force in Kandahar, said. Four Afghan police officers and one Afghan soldier were killed in the fighting and four police officers and three soldiers were wounded, according to a Defense Ministry statement said. Afghan troops found the bodies of 35 Taliban fighters on the ground and had intelligence that the Taliban survivors had carried more than 25 other bodies from the scene, General Rahmatullah Raufi, the Afghan Corps Commander of Kandahar, said during a telephone interview. "This was a successful operation", he said. A local official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said that district officials, along with a local representative of the Red Cross, had gathered up 34 bodies of Taliban fighters and had handed them to village elders to pass on to relatives or bury them. Villagers had told him that Taliban fighters had carried away another 45 bodies to neighboring villages, 20 to the village of Pashmul and 25 to Sperwan, he said. If true, the total killed would be as much 79. Most of the fighting took place in the main shopping street of the Panjwai district center, Major Innis said. "It was an attempt by the Taliban to overwhelm to that district center", he said. "Panjwai is strategic territory for the Taliban because it impacts on Highway One", he said, describing Afghanistan's main ring road that connects Kandahar to the western city of Herat. "The Taliban are continually trying to control that highway", he said. "Secondly, Panjwai is an historical area, almost the birthplace of the Taliban. Some key leaders were born there". The fighting came after four American soldiers were killed on Saturday in two separate clashes with Taliban fighters in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan and Uruzgan Province in the south.