The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Kandahar

Twenty-two Taliban insurgents and six Afghan policemen were killed in overnight clashes in the south of the country, provincial authorities said Wednesday.

Dozens of Taliban fighters launched an attack on Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, some 550 km (340 miles) southwest of the capital Kabul. During a four-hour gun battle 18 insurgents were killed, provincial police chief Asadullah Sherzad said.

In another incident, armed men killed six Afghan policemen at their checkpost in the same district Tuesday night, spokesmen for the provincial governor, Dawood Ahmadi said.

NATO-led Afghan troops killed four Taliban fighters during a sweep in the Andar district of Ghazni province Tuesday, a senior police officer in the province, General Naorooz said.

Despite a slight drop in militant activity during Ramadan last month, violence in Afghanistan is running at its highest rate since the U.S.-led invasion to wrest control from the militant Islamist Taliban movement in 2001.

The United Nations says more than 3,800 people, a third of them civilians, were killed in the first seven months of this year.