KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The six-day death toll in Af-ghanistan rose to 286 on Monday after U.S. warplanes hunting Taliban fighters bombed a religious school and mud-brick homes in the southern part of the country.
Dozens of suspected militants and 17 civilians were killed in one of the deadliest strikes since the American-led invasion began in 2001.
Pickup trucks ferried wounded villagers to a hospital in nearby Kandahar city. One woman, cradling her injured baby, recounted seeing "dead people everywhere" after the nighttime attack.
Taliban violence escalates each spring in Afghanistan with snow melting on mountain passes. But the scale of the assaults — and of U.S.-led coalition response — has been greater this year, as thousands of NATO forces prepare to deploy in the volatile south, the heartland of the ousted Islamic regime.
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According to coalition and Afghan figures, the airstrikes brought the death toll of militants, Afghan forces, coalition soldiers and civilians to as many as 286 since Wednesday, when the recent storm of violence erupted in the south.
A coalition statement said it confirmed 20 Taliban killed in the attack on the village of Azizi in Kandahar province late Sunday and early Monday, while there were "an unconfirmed 60 additional Taliban casualties." One Afghan villager put the count of Taliban dead at 35 to 40.
U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry told The Associated Press the military was "looking into" whether civilians also were killed. Afghan officials said 17 civilians died.
Eikenberry said there are more Taliban militants and drug traffickers in the southern provinces of Afghanistan this spring than a year ago.
Eikenberry told AP the coalition was aggressively pursuing the Taliban.
"The Taliban has suffered extraordinary losses in the last three or four weeks — several hundred Taliban killed in the field," he said. "We're the ones that are moving. They're the ones who are trying to hold."
The coalition said it was the third clash in Azizi in a week. Up to 27 militants were killed in a ground battle and airstrike there Thursday.
U.S. Air Force A-10 "Wart-hogs" were used in the attack, said U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Tamara Lawrence. The warplane is designed for close air support of ground forces, and Lawrence confirmed that coalition troops were on the ground during the attack.
Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said the airstrike killed 16 civilians and wounded 16. "These sort of accidents happen during fighting, especially when the Taliban are hiding in homes," he said. "I urge people not to give shelter to the Taliban."
A doctor at Mirwaise Hospital, Mohammed Khan, said he had treated 10 people from the village.
In the hospital, a man with blood on his turban and clothes said insurgents had been hiding in an Islamic religious school, or madrassa, in the village since the recent fighting.
Aircraft "bombed the madrassa, and some of the Taliban ran from there and into people's homes. Then, those homes were bombed," said Haji Ikhlaf, 40. "I saw 35 to 40 dead Taliban and around 50 dead or wounded civilians."
