Taliban hold out in Afghan city for second day

Nearly 50 people have been wounded in 24 hours since militiamen armed with suicide vests, guns and rocket-propelled grenades besieged targets in Kandahar including the governor\'s office, police stations and the local intelligence HQ.

The attacks are the most significant since the Taliban announced the start of their annual spring offensive last week and vowed to step up their fight after US commandos killed Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan.

But provincial governor Toryalai Wesa said the militants also suffered heavy losses during the fighting -- 18 insurgents were killed and seven captured.

As the biggest city in the south and the Taliban\'s birthplace, control of Kandahar is seen as key to US-led efforts to end the nearly 10-year Taliban insurgency and hand Afghan forces responsibility for national security by 2014.

The dramatic standoff began at around 1:00 pm (0830 GMT) Saturday when a squad of militants attacked the governor\'s office from nearby buildings.

Officials said at least 10 blasts, including seven suicide attacks, rocked the city as assaults spread rapidly to other sites.

Although the violence died down overnight, two Taliban fighters still occupied a traffic police building on Sunday, armed with guns, rockets and grenades. It is thought they may also be equipped with suicide vests.

The building is close to the local office of the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, an institution frequently targeted by insurgents.

The police chief of the area where the insurgents were holding out, Salem Ehsas, said he was waiting for them to run out of ammunition before striking and acknowledged that he did not want his units to suffer casualties.

"There are many civilian houses near where the insurgents are," he told a press conference.

"We don\'t want to harm the civilians and we are waiting for the insurgents to run out of ammunition so we can conduct a safer operation. We also do not want our forces to sustain further casualties."

Kandahar\'s streets were virtually deserted and the city was relatively quiet on Sunday with occasional gunfire, an AFP reporter said, while roads into the city have been blocked off.

A doctor at Kandahar\'s main hospital, Mohammad Hashim, said that two civilians and two members of the Afghan security forces had been killed.

"We have registered a total of 46 wounded so far. Twenty-four of the wounded are security personnel and the rest are civilians," he said. "We have also registered four dead -- two civilians and two security personnel."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has branded the attack "revenge" for this week\'s killing of the Al-Qaeda leader by US forces in Pakistan. The Taliban, however, said the operation was planned several weeks in advance.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) whose troops were involved in the operation, Major General James Laster, described it as a "spring offensive spectacular attack which was thwarted".

There are around 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. Limited withdrawals from seven relatively peaceful areas are due to start in July ahead of the planned end of foreign combat operations in 2014.

International forces say that Kandahar and the surrounding area, traditionally hotbeds of unrest, are now safer following months of intense fighting last year to clear Taliban strongholds.

But government officials and institutions are still frequently targeted by militants in the city.

Nearly 500 Taliban prisoners escaped from Kandahar\'s prison last month through a huge tunnel. Also in April, Kandahar\'s police chief was killed by an attacker in a police uniform, while Wesa\'s deputy was assassinated in January.

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