Dozens killed in Afghan violence

JALALABAD (Afghanistan)—A suicide bomb wounded three people including a foreign soldier in Afghanistan, while officials reported that 14 people were killed in a series of Taliban attacks.
Afghanistan - Afghan police killed seven suspected Taliban, and three policemen died in a shootout with insurgents in volatile southern Afghanistan, police said Saturday.
Meanwhile, in the east of the country, a suicide car bomber hit a U.S.-led coalition convoy Saturday on the main highway in Nangarhar province, wounding three people, including a coalition soldier, police said.
The violence comes amid the deadliest surge in militant attacks and fighting in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban regime by U.S.-led forces nearly five years ago.
Also, the Afghan army supported by airstrikes launched an operation Saturday against Taliban militants in southern Kandahar province, said Gov. Asadullah Khalid. He had no further details.
Khalid said authorities were were forbidding any traffic — cars, motorbikes, even bicycles — on roads other than the main highway because of the presence of Taliban fighters.
Most of the dead, who included a district chief and six policemen, were killed in southern Afghanistan on Friday. NATO's military force in the area had already announced that a British soldier was killed in the area the same day.
The suicide blast -- the latest in a rash of such attacks carried out by the Taliban -- was near the eastern city of Jalalabad.
The attacker exploded a bomb-filled car near a convoy of the US-led coalition just outside the city, police said. A coalition soldier, an Afghan troop and an interpreter were hurt, they said on Saturday.
The coalition confirmed that one of its troops, whose nationality was not released, and an interpreter were wounded in a bomb blast near the city.
The US-dominated coalition helped to topple the Taliban from government in late 2001 and is now hunting down fighters from the group and other Islamist outfits behind a wave of violence in Afghanistan.
Officials meanwhile reported on Saturday a spate of attacks in southern Helmand province where the British soldier was killed and another wounded.
The bulk of a British force of about 4,750 soldiers is in Helmand, where their commander has admitted they are facing some of the country's worst and most prolonged fighting since World War II.
Helmand police said Taliban fighters had stormed a police post in the Gereshk area late Friday but were repelled. Three policemen were killed and two wounded, police commander Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail told AFP.
Also on Friday, rebels attacked the headquarters of the province's Garmser district which was captured by the Taliban for around 48 hours in mid-July.
Four Taliban and a policeman were killed in a two-hour battle, Mullahkhail said. "The Taliban pulled back after our policemen resisted bravely. They've left the bodies of their dead fighters," he said.
In southeastern Ghazni province, the governor of Muqur district was shot dead Friday while travelling to the provincial centre and four of his bodyguards wounded, a government spokesman said.
"It was the work of the brutal Taliban," spokesman Abdul Ali Fukuri said.
And in neighboring Zabul province, at least three Taliban rebels were killed after attacking a police patrol on Friday, provincial police chief Noor Mohammad Pakteen said.
Two other policemen were killed Friday in an attack on a district headquarters in southern Day Kundi province, the interior ministry said.
The Taliban have stepped up their attacks this year, targeting mainly Afghan, coalition and ISAF soldiers but also killing scores of civilians.
The commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in an interview published Saturday that his force had set itself a six-month deadline to establish a clear advantage over Taliban insurgents.
It had to prove that President Hamid Karzai's administration had the upper hand in the battle against supporters of the deposed Taliban regime, Lieutenant General David Richards told Britain's Financial Times business daily.
"We have to show in the next six months that the government is on the winning side," he said.—Agencies