Ala Sang, Afghanistan ? Factional fighting erupted Friday in the hills just west of Kabul the latest in a series of Afghan power struggles ahead of a planned national council that will choose a new government.

Meanwhile, south of the capital, U.S. forces seized ammunition caches and captured several al-Qaida suspects.

Mortars flashed from the rocky hillsides and Kalashnikovs crackled in the valley below only 25 miles west of the capital. A tank trundled down the dirt road the main one from Kabul to Kandahar to provide backup to weary fighters.

The battle began early Friday when Gen. Zafar Uddin moved into the area to take control of checkpoints manned by a local leader named Nangialai, who has designs on the governorship of Wardak province, according to Uddin fighters and government officials.

At least 100 of Nangialai’s men mounted a fierce resistance using anti-tank rockets, mortars and Kalashnikov rifles, they said. By sunset, Uddin’s 500 men advanced about three miles, capturing two villages and four checkpoints, but still faced heavy fighting.

Zapto Alokozai, a senior federal police official who visited the region Friday, said in Kabul that six of Uddin’s men had been killed and two of Nangialai’s had been wounded.

But Uddin said there were no deaths and only one of Nangialai’s men was wounded.

Uddin said he captured 20 of Nangialai’s men, a figure confirmed by an Interior Ministry spokesman who uses the single name Fridoon.

“Nangialai was a member of the Taliban and he wanted to destabilize the situation in the region,” Fridoon said.

He confirmed Uddin’s account and said he was carrying out the Defense Ministry orders.

Uddin, surveying the battle from a hilltop with two dozen of his men, said he expected fighting to drag out because he had little backup. He called Nangialai a former Taliban leader who was using caches of Taliban arms to destabilize the interim government.

He said the period of interim government was “an opportunity for us to build our country and let the people of the world contribute. If we start this kind of fighting again, they will not pay any attention to us anymore.”

Uddin said he had the full backing of the Defense Ministry, and appealed for more international aid for the interim government.

“If friendly countries support the Defense Ministry and our national army, in a very short time we can take over all the country,” he said. “Indeed, we need their support.”

But Alokozai, the police official, said Uddin also was allied with a former prime minister whom the government accuses of trying to destabilize its regime.

He described Nangialai as a supporter of the interim government.

The fighting so close to the capital served as a stark reminder of the immense task facing interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai as he seeks to consolidate central authority after last year’s fall of the Taliban after a U.S.-led bombing campaign.