KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 3 -- Afghan troops backed by U.S. warplanes killed as many as 70 guerrillas in a day-long battle near the Pakistani border, military officials said Tuesday.
An Afghan commander said government forces heard radio messages in Arabic and Chechen suggesting that al Qaeda fighters were involved.
"We could hear the enemy," said Gen. Nawab, the Afghan commander. "I'm sure there were foreigners involved."
The battle began about 2 a.m. Monday when dozens of guerrillas armed with rockets, mortars and machine guns attacked a border post in the province of Khost, a former al Qaeda stronghold 100 miles southeast of the capital, Kabul.
A U.S. spokesman, Maj. Rick Peat, said the U.S. military sent in a B-1 bomber, A-10 ground-attack aircraft and helicopter gunships and flew in Afghan reinforcements, eventually forcing the assailants to flee "in panic." Peat said no U.S. ground troops were involved.
Pilots reported seeing 40 to 50 bodies on the battlefield near the mountainous Pakistani border, Peat said, and several wrecked vehicles were spotted.
Nawab put the rebel toll as high as 70, saying the guerrillas had dragged away many dead and wounded as they retreated into Pakistan. Afghan forces recovered only 10 bodies, he said.
The U.S. military said one of more than 100 Afghan soldiers involved in the fighting was killed and three others were wounded. However, another Afghan commander, Khial Baz, said two of his men had died.
The guerrilla death toll appeared to be one of the heaviest since U.S. planes pounded Taliban forces before the hard-line Islamic movement was driven from power in late 2001.
Assaults led by U.S. Marines in a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan in May and June killed more than 100 guerrillas, commanders have said, but it was unclear how many fell in a single engagement.
Khost borders Pakistan's Waziristan tribal area, where Pakistani officials say hundreds of foreign fighters have found refuge among sympathetic Pashtun tribesmen, the same ethnic group from which the Taliban draws much of its strength.
