Fight in key Afghan sector kills scores of insurgents

U.S. and Afghan troops have killed at least 115 insurgents as part of a fight to gain control of a supply route to a key U.S. base in northeastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan and U.S. military officers.

Civilians, as well as U.S. and Afghan soldiers, described an exceptionally intense fight in which bombers have flown in from as far away as the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. The Americans have also fired rockets from more than 100 miles away as they struggled to oust insurgents who month after month have attacked convoys on the road and dominated much of this corner of Kunar Province. Kunar, perhaps more than any other area of the country's northeast, has posed serious problems for U.S. troops. The terrain is made up of arid mountains that rise in successive folds, dropping down into narrow, heavily wooded valleys that provide cover for insurgents.

The American son of Al-Qaida militant Anwar Awlaki was only 16 when he was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen weeks after a similar strike killed his father, the teenager's family says, raising fresh questions about the Obama administration's use of targeted killings as a counterterrorism tool.

Abdel-Rahman Anwar Awlaki was born in Denver, according to what his family says is his Colorado birth certificate, which they posted online. His father, who was born in New Mexico, was in charge of external operations for Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. officials said. The teenager was among several people killed in a U.S. drone missile strike near Azzan, Yemen, on Friday. U.S. officials said the military strike targeted Egyptian-born Ibrahim Banna, a senior figure in al-Qaida's Yemeni affiliate, who also was reported killed. The Awlaki family condemned the attack and said Abdel-Rahman was only going to dinner. "His Facebook page shows a typical kid," the Yemen-based family said on Facebook. "A teenager who paid a hefty price for something he never did and never was."

U.S. officials "had no idea" he was with Banna, but "this was a military-aged male traveling with a high-value target," said a senior Obama administration official.

Two Americans and seven Afghan troops were killed Wednesday in three incidents, even as the summer "fighting season" is drawing to a close, officials said. The two U.S. soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device in the east, military officials said. The region, near the Pakistan border, has been the scene of some of the year's heaviest fighting.

NEWS SERVICES