Kabul - Six Afghan police and 18 militants were killed when Taliban fighters attacked several police posts in a second attempt in three days to capture a provincial capital in southern Afghanistan, police said Wednesday.

Taliban militants attacked a police post on the outskirts of Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province, on Tuesday night, killing six policemen, provincial police chief Assadullah Shirzad said.

Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousif Ahmadi, talking about the same firefight, said Taliban fighters killed 12 police and soldiers in their attacks on three security posts. Ahmadi spoke by phone from an undisclosed location.

Kabul - Three NATO-led soldiers were killed on Tuesday in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, the military said.

The soldiers were part of more than 50,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that have been deployed to Afghanistan from 40 nations following the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

ISAF did not reveal the nationalities of the dead soldiers, nor did it say where in the eastern region the incident took place. Most of the forces operating in the eastern region under the alliance's command are from the US.

Kabul - Gunmen killed a senior provincial official in southern Afghanistan while a US-led coalition soldier was killed and several others were wounded in a roadside bomb attack in the same region, officials said Tuesday.

Elsewhere in the country an Afghan army soldier and 11 Taliban militants were killed in separate incidents.

Kabul - A woman and a child were killed Sunday in a Taliban

Kabul, Oct. 13 : The American commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Major General David D. McKiernan, has expressed confidence about winning the war against the Taliban.

General McKiernan, who leads more than 65,000 troops from about 40 foreign countries, including 33,000 Americans, said at a news conference in Kabul that there had been “too many” reports in the media recently asserting that the foreign forces and their Afghan allies were losing the war.

Kabul - A woman and a child were killed in a rocket attack in eastern Afghanistan, while two Afghan private security guards and five suspected Taliban militants were killed elsewhere in the country, officials said Monday.

The woman, 55, and a 14-year-old boy were killed when a rocket fired allegedly by Taliban fighters hit their house in Khost city Sunday, Khost province police chief General Abdul Qayoum said.

Qayoum said two other children were wounded in the rocket attack that he blamed on Taliban militants.