KABUL - Nine Afghan policemen and a district police chief died in a battle with Taliban fighters Friday, as troops killed 40 militants in operations to counter the mounting insurgency, authorities said.
The series of bloody clashes came as Afghanistan welcomed in its New Year, based on the solar calendar, amid alarm about the rise of a Taliban insurgency which has led Washington to deploy 17,000 extra troops.
The police officers and district head died fighting the Taliban in the remote northern province of Jawzjan, an unusual battlefield for the extremists, who focus their activity in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
"Today in a clash between Taliban and police, the district chief and nine police were killed," provincial police chief Khalil Aminzada told AFP.
The fighting was in a district called Koshtipa, on the border with Turkmenistan, he said.
Aminzada was unable to say if any militants were also killed. A Taliban spokesman confirmed the fighting in an Afghan media report.
The U.S. military said troops killed 30 militants on Thursday in the flashpoint southern province of Helmand, in a district where a key anti-Taliban lawmaker was killed in a bomb attack the same day.
The toll was the highest from a single clash announced by the military in more than two months, with Afghanistan gearing up for another year of intense fighting against the al-Qaida-linked Taliban after the winter months.
The Afghan army led a joint patrol into an area of Gereshk district where gunmen were known to operate, the U.S. military said.
"The patrol was attacked by numerous armed militants with heavy small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire," it said in a statement.
The "combined element returned fire with small-arms and close air support, killing 30 militants," it added.
There was no independent confirmation of the toll.
The province is one of Afghanistan's most dangerous, with Taliban militants tied into a lucrative illegal opium trade holding large swathes of territory.
On Thursday, lawmaker Dad Mohammad Khan was killed with three of his bodyguards and a senior policeman when a bomb tore through their vehicle in Gereshk. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.
Elsewhere on Friday, Afghan and U.S.-led troops killed seven Taliban fighters who gathered in the southwest province of Farah to attack the provincial governor's house, the governor told AFP.
Intelligence officials were tipped off about the planned assault and called troops to the scene, governor Rohul Amin told AFP.
The U.S. military said three more militants were killed in a raid against a cell involved in making bombs to attack the capital Kabul.
The Taliban held power in Afghanistan from 1996 until late 2001, when they were removed in a U.S.-led invasion.
The escalating conflict in their insurgency has caused concern among the international community trying to stabilize the war-torn nation and stop it again becoming a lawless breeding ground for Islamist extremists.
U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 extra U.S. troops to the country and a top-to-bottom review of his war policy, shifting the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the fight against Islamic militants.
There are currently 75,000 international soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, about 38,000 of them Americans, to help Kabul fight the insurgency, which last year reached its deadliest point yet.
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