Airstrike kills up to 80 Taliban, U.S. officials say

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — U.S. warplanes struck a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, killing up to 80 suspected rebels, military officials said Monday. The local governor and a doctor said 17 civilians also were killed.

Wounded villagers at a hospital described how aircraft bombed mud-brick homes where Taliban rebels were hiding, having fled there from a religious school after the airstrikes started. An infant was among the wounded.

With the attack late Sunday and early Monday, as many as 286 militants, Afghan forces, coalition soldiers and civilians have been killed in the storm of violence that erupted Wednesday in the south, according to coalition and Afghan figures.

The escalation of Taliban fighting — some of the deadliest combat in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Islamic regime in 2001 — comes ahead of preparations for the U.S.-led coalition to hand over security operations in southern Afghanistan to NATO by July.

There were conflicting death tolls from the recent attack on the village of Azizi, in Kandahar province. The coalition in a statement that it had confirmed 20 Taliban killed, while there were "an unconfirmed 60 additional Taliban casualties."

U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry told The Associated Press the military was "looking into" reports of civilian deaths.

U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthogs were used in the attack and are specially designed for close air support of ground forces. U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Tamara Lawrence confirmed that coalition troops were on the ground during the attack.

The warplane is designed for close air support of ground forces.

At Mirwaise Hospital in the city of Kandahar, a man with bloody clothing said insurgents had been hiding in an Islamic religious school, or madrassa, in the village since the recent fierce fighting.

Aircraft "bombed the madrassa and some of the Taliban ran from there and into people's homes. Then, those homes were bombed," said Haji Ikhlaf, 40. "I saw 35 to 40 dead Taliban and around 50 dead or wounded civilians."

Another villager, Zurmina Bibi, cradled her wounded 8-month-old. She said about 10 people were killed in her home, including three or four children.

"There were dead people everywhere," she said, crying.