A Taliban shadow district chief has been killed in fighting with security forces in Afghanistan's eastern Wardak province, officials said.

About 100 Taliban fighters on motorcycles attacked a northern Afghan village which was working to join the government-sponsored local police programme against the insurgency, killing one villager, police said today.

A preliminary survey found that Afghanistan may have 1.8 billion barrels of oil in the north of the country, an official said.

Taliban insurgents have freed a Turkish engineer they kidnapped a month ago as he worked on a road project in southern Afghanistan, officials said today.