New Taliban sanctuary feared in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- As NATO troops exert pressure on Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, militants have regrouped in western provinces and ignited violence that has killed a dozen people in two days, officials said yesterday.

Afghan and NATO officials fear that Farah province, which borders Iran and is twice the size of Maryland, could become a Taliban sanctuary if military power isn't used to crush the militant threat quickly. Farah is a predominantly Pashtun area where people have ethnic links to the Taliban militia.

US-led and NATO forces have been battling Taliban and allied militants this year in Afghanistan's worst spate of violence since the American-led invasion that toppled the hard-line regime in 2001 for harboring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Up to 200 Taliban fighters in dozens of pickup trucks poured into the Farah town of Bakwa early yesterday, surrounding a police compound and firing rocket-propelled grenades at policemen, said Major General Sayed Agha Saqeb, the provincial police chief.

Taliban fighters took over the compound for an hour before police reinforcements drove them off into the desert darkness. Two militants were killed and two wounded, while two police also died and two were wounded, Saqeb said.

The raid occurred a day after Taliban insurgents ambushed a police patrol in Farah. Four police and four militants were killed. Several days earlier, a roadside bombing there wounded four Italian soldiers.

``If there is the possibility of some sort of security deterioration in the area, we will get onto it very quickly," a NATO spokesman, Major Toby Jackman, said in an interview.

The threat of a new front opening in Afghanistan's worsening insurgency comes as NATO commanders try to persuade member states to send more soldiers and air support immediately to battle the Taliban resurgence.

Also yesterday, in Washington, Senator John F. Kerry accused the Bush administration of pursuing a ``cut and run" strategy in Afghanistan that has emboldened terrorists and made the United States less safe.

The Massachusetts Democrat made the comments during a speech at Howard University.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee dismissed Kerry's criticism, saying he lacks the credibility on the war on terror to be taken seriously.