Kabul  - Ten suspected Taliban fighters were killed and four others were wounded in separate clashes with US-led coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan, the US military said on Wednesday.

The combined forces targeted a senior Taliban commander in Zormat district of the south-eastern province of Paktia on Tuesday, US military said in a statement.

As the forces approached the targeted area, a group of militants barricaded inside a compound fired on the troops with small arms fire, the statement said, adding the joint forces returned fire and killed five armed militants.

The targeted commander was "believed to act as a liaison between the al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist networks, assisting with the movement of foreign fighters into Afghanistan," the statement said, but did not elaborate if the commander was among those killed.

Separately, coalition forces killed another five militants and detained four others in an operation that targeted the Haqqani network sub-commander in Sabari district of the neighbouring province of Paktika, the statement said. Haqqani is an associate group of Taliban insurgents.

During the operation, the militants fired on combined forces from inside a compound, it said, adding that troops waited until eight Afghan women and eleven children exited from the building and then killed the militants inside the building.

Southern and eastern provinces of the country, which lie on the border with Pakistan, are the main hub for Taliban activities in the country. Afghanistan has around 2,400 kilometres of porous border with Pakistan, an area that is mostly ungoverned with militants crossing the border freely.

Taliban militants have stepped up their attacks on Afghan and some 70,000 international forces in the country. Most of the attacks are initiated by the militants, who often use hit-and-run tactics.

The US-led coalition also targets the militants in various areas of the eastern and southern regions in preemptive ways to weaken the insurgents' offensive capability.

The Afghanistan conflict so far this year killed more than 4,000 people - mostly insurgents, but including more than 200 foreign soldiers and hundreds of Afghan security forces. (dpa)