Afghan forces backed by NATO air attacks Sunday drove the Taliban out of a district center in southern Afghanistan, days after the insurgents overran it, officials said.

Afghan forces backed by NATO air attacks Sunday drove the Taliban out of a district center in southern Afghanistan, days after the insurgents overran it, officials said.

The town of Musa Qala in volatile Helmand province was captured by the insurgents on Wednesday, after a week of clashes in which the Taliban claimed to have killed or captured dozens of Afghan forces.

Reinforcements were brought in from neighboring Kandahar province.
And early Sunday police and troops broke through the Taliban defenses in Musa Qala after NATO airstrikes pounded their trenches in and around the district center, officials said.

"Security forces including army and commando units conducted a successful offensive this morning. They recaptured the district and killed 220 enemy fighters," defense ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri told AFP, insisting that government forces did not suffer any casualties.

Operations were continuing to push the remnants of the Taliban out of the rest of Musa Qala district, Waziri said.
The Taliban have not yet commented on the reports.

Helmand is Afghanistan's main opium-growing area and a stronghold of the Taliban, whose government was toppled in 2001 for harboring Al-Qaeda leaders after the September 11 attacks on the United States.