KABUL (AFP) — Two British soldiers were killed Wednesday and 75 more rebels reported dead in new clashes in Afghanistan, including in an area where the Taliban held 19 South Koreans hostage until last week.
The fresh bloodshed comes after days of heavy battles between Taliban fighters and international troops that has left more than 300 rebels dead in just over a week, according to an AFP count based on reports.
The British soldiers were killed when an explosion struck their vehicle in the southern province of Helmand, the Ministry of Defence in London said. Another soldier and an Afghan interpreter were wounded, it said.
"It is with deep sorrow that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that two British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan," it said in a statement.
Most of the 158 foreign soldiers to die in Afghanistan this year have been killed in action, with the steadily mounting toll causing alarm in countries sending troops to Afghanistan as part of the US-led "war on terror."
There was meanwhile a second night of fighting in the central province of Ghazni, where the Taliban freed last week 19 South Korean Christian aid workers they had captured six weeks earlier.
The US military said several militants were killed. Ghazni province police chief Alishah Ahamdzai said around 30 Taliban fighters had died in fighting in two districts of the restive province.
There was no way to independently verify the death toll.
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, confirmed the clashes but said all the dead were civilians. The Taliban often falsely report civilian casualties.
The rebels were themselves responsible for killing nearly 230 civilians this year in bomb blasts, security officials said in Kabul Wednesday.
The hardliners shot dead two of their 23 Korean hostages in July and released two in mid-August before freeing the remainder after striking a deal with Seoul.
About 16 rebels, including a commander involved in the kidnappings, were killed in a first night of clashes in Ghazni on Tuesday, police said.
Police and the coalition told AFP the latest operations in Ghazni were routine and not in retaliation for the kidnappings.
The coalition also reported two new battles Tuesday in Kandahar province that erupted after rebels ambushed two separate military patrols. More than two dozen rebel fighters were killed, it said.
The area, called Shah Wali Kot, is one of the flashpoints in the Taliban's intensifying insurgency. The coalition said Wednesday more than 150 Taliban had been killed there in the past nine days.
Security forces are pushing into more areas and therefore encountering more insurgents, coalition spokesman Major Chris Belcher told AFP.
"As Afghan national security forces increase the number of patrols, of course they are going to meet the Taliban more often," he said.
In another incident Taliban fighters attacked Afghan and foreign soldiers at a checkpost in the southern province of Helmand late Tuesday, an Afghan army general said.
The soldiers fought back, calling in air support. "Twenty-five Taliban were killed," General Mohyiddin Ghori told AFP.
The fighting was in Sangin, another major flashpoint and a hub of the Afghanistan's three billion dollars-a-year opium trade that is said to finance some of the insurgency.
Also in Helmand, two policemen were killed early Wednesday when a Taliban-style bomb struck their vehicle, a district chief told AFP.
The Taliban were removed from government in late 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda and they are trying to take back power.
The government of President Hamid Karzai relies on international soldiers and aid to fight back the rebellion and start rebuilding a country devastated by nearly three decades of war.
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