6 Afghan cops, US soldier killed in Taliban attack

The violence was the latest in war-torn Afghanistan's troubled southern regions, where militants from the ousted Taliban regime have stepped up a four-year insurgency.

Highway police commander Raz Mohammad said armed insurgents stormed a checkpost in Maywand district of southern Kandahar province on Thursday night, killing six of his men.

"Taliban attacked a highway police post overnight and killed six police", he said.

"They set ablaze the post with four police bodies inside."

Kandahar was the birthplace of the ultra-Islamic Taliban movement which, backed by Pakistan, took over most of the country during its 1996-2001 reign.

Meanwhile the US soldier was killed and an Afghan National Army soldier was wounded in Deh Rawood district of neighbouring Uruzgan province on Friday, a US military statement said.

It said the US trooper, whose name was being withheld pending notification of next of kin, came under attack by small arms fire while his patrol investigated a weapons cache.

"We deeply mourn the loss of one of our soldiers," Colonel Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, said in the statement.

The wounded Afghan soldier was evacuated to the southern city of Kandahar for treatment.

Fourteen US troops have now died in hostile action in Afghanistan this year.