Afghan govt fears uprising in east

GARDEZ/BAGRAM AIR BASE, March 11: Taliban and Al Qaeda guerillas have regrouped in several Afghan provinces near Kabul and thousands of government troops are on the way to head off a fresh uprising , a senior Afghan military official said on Monday.

The official said the provinces were Wardak, Ghazni, Khost and Paktia, an eastern region where thousands of US-led troops are in the ninth day of a battle to rout Al Qaeda holed up in mountain caves. "We have intelligence that remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda are armed and still active in these regions," the official said. "Up to 5,000 troops will be deployed and stationed in these areas within the next two days," he said.

As the battle near Gardez, capital of Paktia, looked close to ending, hundreds of Afghan troops with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles moved in to take the lead in a possible final assault on Al Qaeda around the area of Shahi Kot. With the Afghan forces closing in, the United States withdrew more troops from the battle zone.

For the second day running MH-47 Chinook helicopters landed at Bagram air base, the staging point for "Operation Anaconda", with troops fresh from battle. Some 400 soldiers returned on Sunday.