KANDAHAR, May 18: About 100 people were killed in two of the most violent days in Afghanistan since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban, as hundreds of insurgents attacked a southern town and fighting flared across the country.

Government officials said 13 policemen and 40 Taliban were killed in hours of fighting that raged after the strike on Mosa Qala town, 470km southwest of Kabul, was launched on Wednesday evening.

Helmand’s deputy governor, Amir Mohammad Akhundzada, said it was the biggest strike in the province by the militants since they were driven from power more than four years ago.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan government forces in recent months as thousands more Nato peacekeepers arrive. Violence in parts of the country is the worst it has been since the end of their rule.

“Thirteen policemen were killed and six were injured,” Interior Ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said in a statement. “Forty people on the enemy side were killed.”

In a separate incident, a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy in the generally peaceful western city of Herat, killing himself and an American civilian. A US embassy spokesman said he was a State Department contractor training Afghan police.

A suicide bomber also attacked a US military convoy near Ghazni town, 125km southwest of Kabul, killing himself and a man on a motorcycle, an Afghan army officer said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Herat attack but there was no immediate claim for the Ghazni blast.

A Canadian woman soldier was killed in fighting in neighbouring Kandahar province on Wednesday, hours before Canada’s parliament narrowly backed a two-year extension of Canada’s Afghan mission to 2009.

The US military said 18 Taliban were killed and 26 captured in the fighting in Panjwai district, 25km west of Kandahar town on Wednesday.

In fighting in the area on Thursday, seven Taliban were confirmed killed and up to 20 others might have been killed in an air strike, the US military said. One foreign soldier was wounded, it said.

Three policemen and an intelligence official were killed and six policemen wounded in other attacks in Ghazni, the provincial governor said.

KARZAI: President Hamid Karzai renewed his criticism of Pakistan on Thursday, claiming Pakistan was training militants and sending them over the border.

“Pakistani intelligence gives military training to people and then sends to Afghanistan with logistics,” the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency quoted Mr Karzai as telling tribal elders and officials in an eastern province.

In Helmand, Afghan forces battled the insurgents after they withdrew from Mosa Qala, Akhundzada said. There had been civilian casualties but he said he did not know how many.

British troops oversee security in Helmand but no foreign soldiers were involved in the battle, Afghan officials said.

The Taliban attacked government offices and police stations, and many shops in the town’s market caught fire, Mr Akhundzada said.

The town is 40km north of the province’s Sangin district, the scene of frequent clashes between Taliban and foreign and government forces.

In Islamabad, the foreign office strongly refuted Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s allegation against Pakistan as baseless and utterly false.

Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam in talking to a private TV channel asserted if President Karzai did possess knowledge about the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, he, instead of propagating them on media, must deliver the information to Pakistan. She added that Pakistan repeatedly asserted its stance that a strong and durable Afghanistan is in our national interest.

Pakistan wishes to see the people of Afghanistan master of their own destiny, she said, adding that Pakistan had no role to play in the internal affairs of Afghanistan therefore alleging Pakistan for the disturbance within Afghanistan must be ended.—Agencies