Twelve Taliban militants and five Afghan soldiers were killed in separate violence across the country over the weekend, officials said Sunday.
Most the militants died when they attacked a police post in Afghanistan’s restive southern Helmand province late Saturday, triggering a gunbattle that also left policemen wounded.
Police arrested two militants but another two escaped, Daud Ahmadi, spokesman for the provincial governor, told a foreign news agency.
"Nine Taliban were killed and they left their bodies at the battlefield. Four Taliban and three policemen were wounded," he said.
Separately, US-led coalition forces said they killed three insurgents outside the capital Kabul on Saturday.
The Afghan army said five of its soldiers died and three others were wounded in two roadside bomb explosions on Saturday.
The Taliban, who were in power from 1996 to late 2001, have waged a bloody insurgency against Afghan and international forces under NATO and US command in Afghanistan.
The rising insurgency has claimed thousands of lives and has paralysed the internationally backed post-Taliban reconstruction of Afghanistan.
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