Pro-government troops were on high alert in southern Afghanistan yesterday after a major clash with Taliban fighters in which 49 people were killed near the former regime's one-time stronghold.
"We are still on high-alert mode and ready for any further Taliban attacks," Kandahar military commander General Khan Mohammad said late Thursday following the battle in southeast Kandahar province, near the Pakistani border.
Afghan officials said 49 people were killed Wednesday in what was believed to be one of the deadliest clashes between Taliban and hundreds of government troops since the hardline militia was ousted in 2001.
Clashes erupted Tuesday when around 100 suspected Taliban fighters armed with rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers attacked pro-government militiamen in Kandahar province.
Forty Taliban died in the attack and nine pro-government militiamen were killed.
Afghan official claims that the heavily-armed fighters crossed over from neighboring Pakistan into Kandahar's southeast border region of Loikarez later sparked a dispute with authorities over the border.
The bodies of 22 Taliban were dumped by Afghan authorities at Killi Faizu refugee camp, just inside Pakistani territory, but these were later removed following protests by Pakistani border guards, a Pakistani official said.
"Afghan authorities have taken the bodies back to Afghanistan this evening [Thursday] for burial," district administrator of Pakistan's Qila Abdullah district Saqib Aziz said.
"We have officially lodged a written protest with Afghan officials and told them that it was an attempt to malign Pakistan," Aziz said.
"If they [the dead] were Pakistanis then why did the Afghan authorities accept their bodies?"
Pakistan was the principal supporter of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, but Islamabad turned its back after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks masterminded by the militia's "guest" Osama bin Laden.
Thousands of Pakistanis are believed to have streamed over the border to fight alongside the Taliban against the US-led military coalition which eventually ousted the regime.
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