Taliban to decide on joining peace talks

Karzai calls for large assembly of elders to end Afghanistan war

KABUL: The Taliban's leaders will decide soon whether to join talks with the Afghan government, a militant spokesman said on Friday, after President Hamid Karzai invited them to a peace council aimed at ending the Afghan war.

In the country's south, fighters launched an assault in the capital of Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province, and were holed up in a building battling government and NATO troops who returned fire with helicopter strikes.