The Taliban said yesterday they were behind an attack on Nato's main base in southern Afghanistan, the third on international forces in a week, showing their determination to meet fire with fire.
As US and Nato troops escalate operations against the militants in their heartland of Kandahar province, the Taliban are making good on threats of a nationwide campaign against targets allied with the Kabul government.
"We attacked Kandahar air base with rockets last night," Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said by phone from an undisclosed location.
The attack came just hours after Britain's new foreign minister William Hague met President Hamid Karzai in Kabul to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan, where Britain has 10,000 troops.
Mr Hague, accompanied by Defence Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, said they had made clear to President Karzai that Britain expected to see his government make progress to match the international strategy for ending the insurgency.
Britain's military and aid commitment in Afghanistan is the second-biggest behind the US.
There are currently 130,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban insurgency under US and Nato command.
The number of foreign troops is set to rise to 150,000 by August as part of a US-led counter-insurgency strategy aimed at speeding up the end of the war now well into its ninth year.
Most of the fresh troops are being deployed to the southern hotspots of Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province, and military planners say they hope to have eradicated the Taliban threat by the start of Ramadan in August.
The attack in Kandahar was the third on international forces in a matter of days after a suicide attack in the capital on Tuesday and an attack on Bagram Airfield, about 60 kilometres north of Kabul, the following day.
Seven hours of fighting at Bagram resulted in the deaths of an American contract worker and 16 militants, Nato said. Nine Nato soldiers were wounded.
The road between Kabul and Kandahar was the scene yesterday of a Taliban ambush on a police convoy that killed the police chief of a district of Ghazni province, the provincial governor, Mohammad Musa Akbarzada said.
Mohammad Nabi Patang, police chief of Andar district, was travelling to the provincial capital, also called Ghazni, when his convoy was attacked, Mr Akbarzada said.
The Taliban were blamed for a bomb attack on an Afghan police vehicle on Saturday in the Manogay district of Kunar province, in which four police officers and four civilians were wounded, the interior ministry said.
In Kapisa province northeast of Kabul, five Afghan civilians were killed on Saturday when an anti-tank mine left over from the Soviet invasion exploded as they were digging on their farmland, the ministry said.
Earlier this month the Taliban announced a new nationwide campaign of attacks in Afghanistan, targeting diplomats, Afghan parliamentarians and foreign contractors, as well as foreign forces.