BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - United States special forces killed five suspected al Qaeda or Taleban militants and detained 32 others in a raid on a compound in southern Afghanistan, military officials said on Monday.
US Marine Captain Steven O'Connor said the special forces team was shot at on Sunday evening as it raided the compound suspected of being a sanctuary for senior al Qaeda or Taleban figures in Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's hometown.
"Five of those individuals in the compound fired on the US personnel so we returned fire and killed the five and took 32 detainees," O'Connor said at Bagram air base, the headquarters of the US-led coalition force in Afghanistan.
"There were no US casualties," he added.
The compound was in Dehrawd, 50km north of the former Taleban stronghold of Kandahar.
Dehrawd, or Dara Wat, in Uruzgan province, is a mud-house village where the fundamentalist Taleban's supreme leader Mullah Omar grew up after being taken in by his uncle.
There has been no sign of the militia leader since the Taleban were ousted last year after a concerted US air campaign and lightning advances by the opposition Northern Alliance.
O'Connor said the detainees from the raid were taken to Bagram air base for interrogation.
He could not say whether all of the detainees were from al Qaeda, the militant Islamic group blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States, or from the Taleban.
It was the first reported firefight between US troops and Islamic rebels since March, when US and Afghan forces took on several hundred in the Shah-i-kot valley of eastern Afghanistan.
Australian special forces two weeks ago killed four suspected al Qaeda fighters near the Pakistani border.
Military officials say al Qaeda and the Taleban have dispersed, melted into the population or slipped across the border to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas, where ethnic Pashtun traditions find an echo in the Taleban's strict interpretation of Islam.
- REUTERS
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