Taliban Urges Western Troops to Leave Afghanistan

Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar urged Western forces on Sunday to take a "golden opportunity" to leave Afghanistan before thousands of their troops were killed in the Islamist group's renewed resistance.

Omar, believed by Western intelligence to be hiding in the mountainous border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, also said a planned increase in U.S. troops would fail to curb violence and would instead fuel the resistance.

"I would like to remind the illegal invaders who have invaded our defenceless and oppressed people that it is a golden opportunity for you at present to hammer out an exit strategy for your forces," Omar said on the day of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic festival of sacrifice, in his yearly message.

"The current armed clashes which now number into tens, will spiral up to hundreds of armed clashes. Your current casualties of hundreds will jack up in to the thousands," he added in an emailed statement.

Afghanistan has seen the worst bloodshed this year since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, with at least 4,000 people killed in the first half of 2008, about a third of them civilians, and some 140 Taliban suicide bombs.

Civilian casualties caused by foreign air strikes have become the biggest source of tension between President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers. Omar said any increase in civilian deaths would help boost the Taliban's resistance.

"The more you destroy our people's houses, the more you martyr our people, the more you will face the wrathful reaction of our mujahideen," he said.