French soldiers among dead in Afghan battle

Taliban insurgents ambushed a convoy of Afghan government forces yesterday and at least 16 people including two French soldiers were killed in heavy fighting, military officials said.

Fighting in the Afghan south in recent days has been some of the most fierce since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001. It comes as thousands of NATO peacekeepers are arriving in the region.

The insurgents ambushed the convoy in the trouble-plagued Sangin district of the southern province of Helmand. Afghan military officials said four government soldiers and at least 10 Taliban were killed. Two French soldiers were killed and one wounded, the French Defence Ministry said. A foreign military official said they were killed in the Sangin battle.

"The fighting is over now and we have started a mopping-up operation," said Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi.

The Taliban, fighting to oust foreign forces and defeat the Western-backed government, said they killed scores of police and soldiers in the ambush. Taliban spokesmen regularly exaggerate their enemies' losses.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks on foreign and government forces in recent months as NATO is expanding its peacekeeping force from 9,000 to 16,000, in preparation for taking over in the south from US-led forces.

US and NATO officials say the Taliban want to disrupt undermine domestic support for the deployments, which will push the number of foreign troops to nearly 40,000, the most since 2001.

In a separate incident, a US soldier was killed and six wounded in a battle in the southern province of Uruzgan on Friday, the US military said.

Thirty-four foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghan combat this year, 24 of them Americans. In all, more than 600 people have been killed in Afghan violence this year.

Yesterday's ambush happened about 40 km south of the town of Mosa Qala, where the Taliban launched a major attack on Wednesday. Sixty Taliban and 16 policemen were killed, the US military said.

Dozens of Taliban were killed in over two days in the neighbouring province of Kandahar, officials there said. A Canadian soldier was also killed. Smaller clashes have erupted in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, and in Uruzgan.

The governor of Kandahar province, Assadullah Khalid, told a news conference on Friday that three senior Taliban members had been captured in the fighting.

He declined to identify them. The BBC reported on Friday that Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah had been captured by international forces in Kandahar.