Afghans count Taliban dead in valley near Kandahar

By Ismail Sameem

MONARAI, Afghanistan (Reuters) - NATO and Afghan forces held mopping up operations, hunting Taliban fighters and burying the dead on Friday, after an air and ground offensive routed hundreds of insurgents from a valley near Kandahar city.

The allies mounted the offensive on Wednesday after the Taliban took control of the Arghandab valley, 20 km (12 miles) northwest of Kandahar.

Around 600 militants, including some who had escaped a week ago during a mass jail break from a prison in the city, had taken up positions in a cluster of villages, according to a provincial official and a Taliban spokesman.

On Friday, the governor of Kandahar province took a group of journalists to the battle zone after 800 Afghan troops, backed by hundreds of, mainly Canadian, NATO soldiers had wrested back control of the district.

They saw the havoc wreaked by shelling on the small mud walled forts that are familiar sights in the Pashtun tribal lands of the region.

In the village of Monarai, the corpses of eight fighters lay under the shade of mulberry trees on the banks of a stream, while a dozen more were piled on top of one another a few meters away.

"We would like to ask you to bury them," Governor Assadullah Khalid told a group of haggard village elders.