A suicide bomber wearing a police uniform has killed the top police official in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province.

A Nato soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in insurgency-wracked southern Afghanistan today, officials said.

A helicopter carrying workers from the US construction company Louis Berger crashed in southern Afghanistan today after coming under small arms fire, killing at least one person and seriously injuring another, a US embassy official said.

A bomb exploded in central Kandahar today, causing an undetermined number of injuries, an official said.