Afghanistan hailed the return of Australian special forces troops as 20 militants were killed and four US soldiers were injured in surging violence ahead of landmark polls in September.Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard announced the deployment this week as rising attacks threatened to disrupt the first parliamentary polls since the fundamentalist Taliban were ousted by US-led forces in late 2001. “The Afghan defense ministry welcomes and thanks the friend country of Australia for the one-time decision of deploying troops ahead of parliamentary elections,” the ministry’s spokesman Mohammed Zahir Azimi said on Sunday.Full Story