US-led forces hunting a Taleban commander have killed an estimated 30 Taleban militia in an overnight raid on a hide-out in southern Afghanistan, the US military said today.

The raid came shortly before Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, arrived on an unannounced visit to Kabul, where he expressed confidence that the Taleban would be defeated.

The US military said yesterday that more than 40 Taleban fighters were killed when an American warplane bombed another Taleban hideout in the southern province of Urzugan.

Afghans wounded in the raid claimed, however, that many women and children were also killed after Taleban fighters overran their villages and took refuge in their houses.

Nida Mohammed, who accompanied a wounded relative to the Kandahar hospital, said two of his young nephews and his brother-in-law were killed in the raid, during which a US warplane dropped four 500lb bombs. "I saw women, men and children killed and wounded," Mr Mohammed said.

"Ten to 12 homes were totally destroyed. It was a day from hell. We are innocent people who don’t help the Taleban, but they destroyed our homes."

The latest raid was in Sangin village in the volatile Helmand province, where a UK force of 3,600 is to be bolstered over the next few months after the death of six UK soldiers. No UK troops were involved in the operation.

"The purpose of this operation was to capture or kill a Taleban commander and his close associates, who have actively planned and carried out attacks on Afghan and Coalition Forces in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces," the military said in a statement.

It did not identify the Taleban commander and it was unclear if he was among the 30 militants the military estimated were killed.

The US-led force also destroyed a weapons cache, although as they left the area a malfunctioning helicopter was damaged "beyond repair" in an emergency landing and destroyed by a coalition airstrike. No coalition or Afghan forces were hurt.

The raid was conducted as part of Operation Mountain Thrust, a large-scale anti-Taleban offensive across southern Afghanistan involving more than 10,000 U.S.-led troops.

It was Mr Rumsfeld's 11 visit to Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of October 2001 and coincided with the most serious fighting since the Taleban's ouster.

At a joint press conference with President Karzai, Mr Rumsfeld said that the militants "don’t want to see a country like Afghanistan have a successful democracy. They won’t succeed".

He also suggested that Europe must help Afghanistan defeat its massive trade in opium by coming up with a "master overall plan" to fight the drugs trade. Afghanistan is the source of around 90 per cent of the opium or heroin traded on the streets of Europe and much of that trade is controlled by the Taleban.

"The drug trade in Afghanistan is a danger to Afghanistan to be sure. It’s also a danger to Western Europe, to Russia and the countries that these drugs flow into," Mr Rumsfeld said.

"It seems to me that it’s important for them to recognise that it’s a lot cheaper, a lot less expensive for them to assist the Afghan government and providing a master overall plan for dealing with the counter-narcotic efforts," he said.

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