AFGHANISTAN - July 26 - US-Afghan Force Kills Up To 40 Taliban Militants.

At least 40 militants and two Afghan soldiers are killed overnight in a raid by US and Afghan troops on a Taliban hideout in south-central Afghanistan. The clash took place in Uruzgan, the province where one US soldier was killed in heavy fighting that also left an Afghan serviceman and 11 insurgents dead. "In this operation, between 40 to 50 Taliban were killed, two Afghan soldiers were killed, and we have arrested more than 25 people since the beginning of the operation", said Jan Mohammed Khan, the provincial governor. Between 15 and 30 insurgents fired on a US-Afghan patrol with guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, also wounding three American troops and an Afghan soldier, he said. The latest clash came after the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, apparently called on supporters to unite and fight Afghan and foreign troops in an unverified audiotape address to insurgents released July 25. "Get united, put aside your differences, continue jihad against the invaders, and you will be victorious", a man who purported to be the one-eyed Taliban leader was heard saying on the tape. Violence has escalated ahead of Afghanistan's parliamentary elections scheduled for Sept 18. The second US troop death in two days raised the American toll from hostile fire to 38 this year. Militant attacks have left more than 750 people dead since March. In the fighting July 25, rebels attacked a patrol in southern Uruzgan Province, setting off a gun battle that killed the American soldier, the Afghan soldier and the 11 rebels, as well as wounding three US troops and an Afghan soldier, a military statement said. US fighter jets and attack helicopters responded to the assault, it said. Eight insurgents were captured. "This tragic loss strengthens our resolve to further the advance of a democratic Afghanistan", said US Army Brig Gen Jack Sterling, deputy commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force 76. The death brings to 173 the number of US troops killed in and around Afghanistan since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001. The latest death came a day after another US service member was killed in a firefight in neighbouring Helmand Province. Also on July 24, a roadside bomb wounded six US service members traveling in a convoy in eastern Kunar Province. Militants then fired on the vehicles before fleeing when US aircraft and artillery fired back, a separate US military statement said. It was not immediately known whether any enemy fighters were killed or wounded, it said. The attacks occurred in the same mountainous area where last month a commando team was ambushed, leaving three Navy SEALs dead, and a special forces helicopter was shot down, killing all 16 troops on board. The July 24 attack was the first major assault on US forces in Kunar since then and may indicate that many of the militants who had been thought to have fled across the border into neighboring Pakistan after the violence in June have returned to Afghanistan.