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— By Mirwais Afghan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The U.S. military launched a new operation on Tuesday against suspected hideouts of Taliban militants in the southern province of Helmand, the region's intelligence chief said on Tuesday.

Dad Mohammad Khan told Reuters nearly two dozen helicopter gunships and about 70 military and non-military vehicles were involved in the operation which began after dawn in Sangin district, north of Lashkar Gah, provincial capital of Helmand.

Khan said U.S. forces launched the operation after receiving information that Mullah Dadullah, a top military leader of the ousted Taliban, was hiding in Sangin near where two U.S. military personnel were killed and two others wounded when the convoy they were traveling in was ambushed at the end of last month.

Khan said Dadullah was not in Sangin, but the brother of Mullah Akhtar Usmani, who served as a key Taliban commander in neighboring Kandahar province, was hiding in the rugged area.

Dadullah is a notorious Taliban commander who recently told the foreign press that the militia was regrouping to regain power it lost in late 2001 in a U.S.-led military campaign.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan made no mention of any new operation in Helmand at its daily briefing on Tuesday.

Khan said the U.S. forces were carrying out house-to-house searches in Sangin. "The operation is a massive one," he told Reuters by satellite phone from Helmand.

The operation is the second by U.S.-led forces in Helmand this year.

The first round in February targeted the mountainous region of Baghran, where locals say dozens of villagers where killed in U.S. bombardments. The U.S. military insists only one civilian was wounded.

About 11,500 U.S. and its coalition forces are based in various parts of Afghanistan to pursue remnants of the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime that gave it shelter.

Afghan government officials say there has been an upsurge in activity by suspected Taliban fighters since the start of the war in Iraq last month and the onset of Afghanistan's traditional spring fighting season.

The provincial governor of southern Afghanistan's Zabul province said Taliban fighters briefly overran military posts in one village on Saturday, but were driven out by pro-government militia.

Last week, the U.S. military said eight Taliban fighters were killed in a massive bombardment of a mountain base in neighboring Kandahar province.

A foreign worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross was executed last month in the northern part of Kandahar.

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