Kabul- Six foreign soldiers were killed and eight soldiers and an Afghan civilian were wounded in separate roadside attacks in Afghanistan, while several Taliban militants were killed elsewhere in the country, the military said on Saturday.

Four coalition soldiers were killed and two others were "seriously" wounded on Saturday in a roadside attack in southern Kandahar province, the US military said in a statement.

The deaths of the soldiers followed a bloody battle in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province on Wednesday between Taliban insurgents and Afghan forces backed by NATO soldiers.

The fierce battle that left more than one hundred Taliban insurgents dead and wounded came after several hundreds of Taliban infiltrated the district.

The militants planted roadside bombed in roads and gardens in the district before fleeing the area after thousands of Afghan and NATO forces moved into the district.

In another roadside attack, one NATO-led soldier was killed and four others were wounded in Dila district of south-eastern province of Paktika on early Saturday, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

ISAF did not disclose the nationalities of the soldiers. However, most of the NATO troops based in eastern region are US soldiers.

Meanwhile, another US-led coalition soldier was killed, two other soldiers and a local civilian were wounded in another roadside attack in the south-eastern province of Farah on Friday evening, a separate US military statement said.

The US military statements did not disclose the nationalities of the deceased soldiers. Most of the soldiers serving under the coalition forces banner are Americans.

Taliban-led militants have stepped up their insurgency mainly in the southern region recently, killing a large number of international forces mostly in roadside and suicide attacks, both tactics widely believed to be have been copied from Iraqi insurgents.

One coalition soldier and his Afghan interpreter were killed in a suicide attack in southern Helmand province on Friday, while four British forces, including the first female soldier since the deployment of British soldiers to the country some six years ago, were killed on Wednesday in the same province.

US military also said in separate statements that their forces killed several Taliban militants in separate clashes and air strikes in southern Kandahar, Helmand and south-eastern provinces of Khost and Kapisa over the past two days.

Three militants were detained and caches of weapon and ammunitions were discovered and destroyed during those operations, the US military said.

Taliban-led insurgency has reached to an unprecedented level with militants conducting sophisticated assaults on the combined forces' targets, despite the presence of some 70,000 international forces and some 150,000 Afghan security forces.

As show of power, Taliban fighters in a spectacular attack on Kandahar city jail last week freed some 900 prisoners including some
400 of their jailed comrades.

The militancy so far this year left more than 2,000 people - mostly insurgents and civilians - dead, while the death toll reached to 8,000 last year, the bloodiest period since the ouster of Taliban regime in late 2001. (dpa)