Taliban fighters tangle with U.S.

By The Associated Press

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KABUL, Afghanistan — Just two days before the second anniversary of the ousting of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, clashes and a car-bomb blast yesterday came as stark reminders of the many problems still facing the country.

Dubai-based Al Arabiya television channel aired what was labeled footage of Taliban fighters clashing with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

It also broadcast a message from a man identified as a Taliban spokesman saying its forces had reorganized and calling on Muslims to pray for victory over U.S. troops during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The warning came as the U.S. military described its first skirmishes with militants in northeastern Afghanistan in a new operation against al-Qaida, the Taliban and fighters loyal to renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

U.S. soldiers also killed one guerrilla in a clash in the remote Nuristan province Monday.

"It's one of the most challenging (operations) that we have undertaken in the two years coalition forces have been here," U.S. spokesman Col. Rodney Davis said yesterday at Bagram Air Base, the American headquarters north of Kabul.

The U.S. military is still hunting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

A 33-year-old Romanian sergeant in the 11,500-strong U.S.-led force in Afghanistan was killed in southern Afghanistan when his convoy came under fire near Spin Boldak, a border town where the Taliban is said to be active. Another soldier was wounded.

In the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, once the bastion of the Taliban, a car bomb blew up outside a U.N. compound, injuring a student and damaging nearby buildings.

Yesterday, a statement purportedly from Mullah Omar urged Muslims around the world to stop being "cowards" by failing to join the jihads, or holy wars, that he and others have called against the "infidel crusading forces."

The statement was faxed to The Associated Press in Peshawar, a city in northwestern Pakistan.

In related developments:

• Saudi authorities rounded up people for questioning in a suicide car bombing that killed at least 17 people in the capital, officials said yesterday, and a purported al-Qaida claim of responsibility blamed Arab victims of the attack for working with the Americans.

Those detained, but not technically arrested, included possible suspects in the attack on the Muhaya housing complex, Saudi security officials said.

The claim of responsibility — the first for Saturday's blast — came in an e-mail from a purported al-Qaida operative, identified as Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj, to the London-based weekly Al-Majalla.

"We struck Muhaya compound," Al-Majalla quoted al-Ablaj as saying in the e-mail. Al-Qaida, it said, believes "working with Americans and mixing with them" is forbidden.

• In a rare admonishment of the United States, Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said yesterday the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay was a "major error."

Palacio told Spanish television channel Telecinco she hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would "open a path" that would remove the prisoners from "legal limbo" a day after the court agreed to hear an appeal asking whether foreigners held at Guantánamo Bay may contest their captivity in American courts.

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