Nato’s top commander has renewed an appeal for allies to urgently provide up to 2,500 troops for the battle with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

Four US soldiers were killed and three others wounded during separate clashes in Afghanistan, a US military spokesman says.

Insurgents attacked a joint Nato-Afghan army convoy in southern Afghanistan, killing two soldiers today, officials said.

Nato troops assumed command today of military operations in volatile southern Afghanistan from the US-led coalition in the latest bid to crush resurgent Taliban forces behind a deadly spike in bloodshed.

An Afghan government inquiry found that a US-led coalition bombing in southern Uruzgan province last week killed 10 civilians and wounded 27, an official said.

Afghan and US-led coalition forces have killed more than 30 members of the Taliban in separate clashes in the southern Helmand province of Afghanistan.

Coalition and Afghan forces today killed an estimated 30 extremists in a raid on a hide-out in southern Afghanistan, the military said.

A Canadian soldier and 10 militants were killed today in fierce fighting near an opium-rich Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, the military said.

A series of battles in volatile southern and eastern Afghanistan killed 14 suspected militants, a US soldier and an Afghan soldier, while suspected Taliban rebels fatally shot six civilians in a strong of assaults, officials said today.

Afghan soldiers and police raided a hideout where a large group of suspected Taliban militants were suspected of preparing to disrupt this weekend’s presidential elections, prompting a three-hour firefight that left seven insurgents dead, officials said today.

Suspected Taliban gunmen stopped a van packed with people on a road in southern Afghanistan, then sprayed the occupants with bullets after finding that they had registered for upcoming national elections, a local police official said today.

An American air strike in an Afghan village earlier this month killed 10 civilians, President Hamid Karzai said today