Kabul  - Nine militants died in a clash with police in southern Afghanistan, while US troops killed three rebels and captured four others in the north, officials said Sunday.

A group of Taliban fighters attacked a police post in Geriskh district of southern Helmand province on Saturday night, Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for the provincial governor said.

"The fighting lasted for two hours and as a result nine Taliban fighters were killed and seven others were wounded," Ahamdi said adding that three police forces were also wounded.

The clash took place in the same day as four Taliban militants were killed and four civilians were wounded in airstrikes by NATO-led forces in Nad Ali district of the same province.

Islamabad  = Rebels in north-western Pakistan attacked a parking bay used by US and NATO contractors in Afghanistan, killing a guard and torching dozens of trucks, police said Sunday.

The attack took place in the early hours at Al-Faisal terminal on the outskirts of Peshawar city, where trucks carrying food and military supplies for Western troops are parked at night.

"A group of insurgents raided the terminal at around 3 am (2200 GMT) and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles at the trucks and container, setting more than
60 of them on fire," police officer Fazal Mohammad Khan said.

Some of the trucks were carrying armoured vehicles for the NATO forces.

Washington, Dec. 7: The Bush administration is preparing to present President-elect Barack Obama with a lengthy, classified strategy review aimed at reversing the gains that militants have made in destabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

To be presented to Obama''s top national security advisers in the next week or two, the review is expected to contain several options, including telling Pakistan''s military that if it wants billions of dollars in American aid will depend on the military''s being reconfigured to effectively fight militants.

Berlin  - NATO's quick reaction force (QRF) in northern Afghanistan, currently about 200 men, is to be tripled in size, according to two German news magazines on Saturday.

One task of the combat unit, which is currently all-German, is to protect thousands of peacekeepers deployed to the country. Back in Germany, the peacekeeping mission is politically unpopular.

One of the Saturday reports suggested non-German soldiers would have to be transferred to the QRF to expand it.

Kabul - Three Canadian soldiers with the NATO-led security forces in Afghanistan and four Taliban militants were killed in the country's south, while Afghan authorities were investigating the deaths of eight prisoners in country's largest prison, officials said Saturday.

The soldiers, serving under the banner of UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), were killed in a roadside bomb blast in southern province of Kandahar on Friday, the Canadian Defence Ministry said in a statement.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 5  -- A roadside bomb in Afghanistan killed three Canadian soldiers and seriously injured two others Friday near Kandahar, military officials said.

The troops were on patrol in an armored vehicle around 9 a. m. when they hit the device, U. S. Maj. Gen. Michael Tucker, the deputy chief of staff of U. S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, told reporters in a teleconference call.

The deaths are the first for the new rotation of Canadian troops, who arrived in Kandahar in September, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. correspondent reported.