22 Taliban Killed in Afghanistan Fighting

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Wednesday, July 26, 2006. Iran has sought closer ties with the ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia since they gained independence with the 1991 Soviet collapse. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze) (Misha Japaridze - AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Fighting in southern Afghanistan killed 22 suspected Taliban militants, officials said Wednesday, as NATO nations approved expanding the alliance's peacekeeping force into the region.

On Thursday, officials said a civilian helicopter crashed in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, killing all 16 people on board, including at least two American civilians.

Afghan army and US.-led coalition troops have recovered 12 bodies and were searching for four more in the difficult, mountainous terrain where the civilian Mi-8 helicopter crashed on Wednesday, Col. Tom Collins, a coalition spokesman told reporters.

The Russian-made civilian helicopter crashed about 25 miles northeast of Khost city.

Collins said there was no indication yet what caused the crash. He said those on board included at least two Americans. The Dutch military has said two of its personnel were also on board.

Meanwhile, the top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said a Taliban insurgency in five provinces of southern Afghanistan is being fueled by international terrorist networks, foreign money and a porous border which the Pakistani government does not control.

"We face a Taliban movement which has apparently recovered and has to be answered by a series of measures, political and military, in cooperation with the Afghan government," he told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Taliban fighters have stepped up attacks this year, triggering the worst violence since the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001 for hosting Osama bin Laden. The bloodshed has raised new fears for Afghanistan's fragile democracy.

The latest clashes, involving Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops and air power, occurred Tuesday and Wednesday in two districts of Helmand province, also the hub of Afghanistan's huge trade in opium and heroin.

Militants attacked a coalition patrol with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in Garmser district Tuesday but suffered seven dead, a coalition statement said.

Another five militants were killed and 11 were wounded Wednesday when they battled 200 Afghan police in Garmser, district police chief Ghulan Rasool said.

In Musa Qala district on Tuesday night, 10 militants were killed and 15 wounded by coalition and Afghan forces backed by airstrikes, said Ghulam Nabi Nalakhail, Helmand's chief of police.