Nine cops killed in Taliban raids

The incidents happened in the southern province of Helmand on Friday night and followed a spate of militant violence in the troubled south, police officials in the province said.

They said five guerrillas died in one of the attacks.

Seven policemen were killed in Hazar Joft district after dozens of insurgents raided and burned the district and police headquarters and the other two died in a raid in Baghran district, they said.

Six police officers were wounded in the Hazar Joft attacks, district police chief Haji Bahadur said.

"Apart from our casualties, five Taliban were also killed in the fighting," he told Reuters.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said Taliban fighters killed 10 policemen and only one insurgent had died.

Helmand was a key Taliban bastion until US-led forces overthrew their radical Islamic government in 2001.

The attacks followed a flare up of violence in the past week in which Afghan and US military officials said at least two dozen Taliban fighters were killed in adjacent Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces.

At least 10 soldiers from the US-led foreign force battling the insurgents were wounded in clashes.

They included five hurt when two US CH-47 Chinook helicopters were forced to make hard landings after being fired on by the guerillas.

Some 20,000 US-led troops, most of them Americans, are hunting Taliban guerillas and their Islamic allies, including Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters.