Pakistan ridicules UK, Afghan charges of sheltering Taliban

Karzai blamed Pakistan on Thursday after two days of bloody clashes in his country left around 100 people dead, including scores of militants, 13 policemen and a female Canadian soldier.

"There is no truth in this," Pakistani foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told AFP. "Pakistan is not providing training to insurgents and it is not sending them to Afghanistan."

Ten people were killed in fresh fighting in Afghanistan as security forces carried out clean-up operations after some of the heaviest clashes in months left more than 100 people dead, most of them Taliban.

"Eight Taliban were killed and two police were also killed in the fighting on Thursday night," Ghazni governor Sher Alam Ibrahimi said.

He said one militant was also captured during the battle while nine policemen were wounded.

The fighting was some of the most violent in Afghanistan since the hardline Islamic Taliban regime was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2001 for sheltering al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Karzai also claimed that hardliners in Pakistani Islamic schools known as madrasas were sending students for jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's military later rubbished a "ludicrous" claim by Colonel Chris Vernon, chief of staff for British forces in southern Afghanistan, that Taliban militants were launching attacks in Afghanistan from its side of the border.