Locals flee town as Taliban dig in for NATO clash
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SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan  - More than 1,000 villagers have fled a southern Afghan town as Taliban fighters dig in to repel NATO efforts to drive them out, residents and officials said on Wednesday.
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NATO forces inflicted a "tactical defeat" on the resurgent Taliban movement in southern Afghanistan in an offensive that ended last weekend, but a growing illegal narcotics trade that helps fund the insurgency is gaining ground, NATO's top military command said today.
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NATO and Afghan government forces have  forced Taliban troops out of a southern Afghan district after a  two-week operation in which NATO said hundreds of militants  were killed.
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Afghan authorities have dropped leaflets warning Taliban occupying a remote town to leave or be forced out, as residents fled fearing an offensive by NATO-led troops.
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KABUL, Sept. 19 -- NATO and Afghan forces launched what officials called a "major military operation" against the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand, a haven for opium poppy cultivation and an insurgent stronghold that is considered Afghanistan's most violent territory.
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NATO planes have bombed a compound in southern Afghanistan, killing a Taliban commander and at least seven of his men, while locals said the raid also took civilian lives.
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Hundreds of Taliban fighters could  abandon their insurgency in Afghanistan as a result of peace  talks under way between local commanders and President Hamid  Karzai's government, a provincial governor said on Saturday.
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Afghan troops on Tuesday prepared to deploy to a town in southern Afghanistan that one official said had been overrun by Pakistani militants.
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LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan  - Residents of a Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan said on Sunday dozens of civilians including women and children had been killed in aerial bombing.
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Tens of thousands of people have fled recent fighting in southern Afghanistan, the UN refugee agency says.
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NATO-led troops launched an offensive against Taliban militants Tuesday in a volatile southern Afghan province where hundreds of militant fighters have amassed.
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Taliban fighters killed three NATO soldiers in an attack in southern Afghanistan Thursday, a NATO spokesman said. The insurgents attacked the soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades near a school on the outskirts of the city of Kandahar, a NATO statement said.
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Somalia's government has sent hundreds of troops backed by Ethiopian soldiers to recapture a strategic southern town seized by the country's powerful Islamic movement, military officials and witnesses said Sunday, as dozens of families began fleeing the area.
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Afghanistan's security forces supported by NATO-led troops will "very soon" launch an operation to clear the southern Afghan town overrun and controlled by Taliban militants, an Afghan official said Saturday.
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In a grimly familiar scenario, the civilians were caught in a battle between Taliban and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, the police said today.
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Afghanistan's NATO force warned Afghans to keep clear of its convoys on Saturday after several incidents in which troops fired at civilians in the mistaken belief they were under attack by suicide bombers.
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In the final hours of British General David Richards' command of NATO forces in Afghanistan, a much-vaunted and equally criticized truce with tribal elders fell apart as the Taliban overran a key southern town.