Dozens of Taliban fighters have been killed by Afghan and Nato forces in Uruzgan, a southern Afghan province, Afghanistan's defence ministry says.

 

The ministry did not give an exact number of those who died on Sunday, but released information stating that the man commanding the group was also killed.

The ministry said that more than 40 weapons, including rockets and heavy machine guns, and a police vehicle were seized.

 

The figures provided by the official would mean that Sunday's operations were one of the deadliest for the Taliban this year.

No Afghan or foreign soldiers reportedly died in the clashes.

 

 

Separately, four Taliban fighters were killed and four others seized in Zabul in the southeast, during joint military operations led by Afghan and multinational forces, Faridullah Khan, the province's security chief, said.

 

 

Two more Nato soldiers were killed the same day when a roadside bomb blew up their vehicle while they were on a security patrol on a busy road west of Kandahar city.

 

 

Another Western soldier was killed in a similar incident elsewhere in the south, the Nato-led force said on Friday, without giving the exact location of the incident.

 

The nationalities of the soldiers have not yet been released.

 

With the latest casualties, 32 troops out of the nearly 70,000 mostly Western soldiers stationed in Afghanistan have died since the start of the year.

 

 

 

The spike in violence concides with a video message to TV networks from a Taliban commander who has been hiding for seven years.

 

Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Taliban in southeastern Afghanistan, vowed a renewed campaign in Afghanistan against US and Nato "invaders".

 

"The Americans said the Taliban was beaten and defeated but we are not defeated," he says in the video.

 

"We will defeat [George] Bush [the US president] and continue our jihad until doomsday."