HERAT, May 25: A foreign soldier, two policemen and a dozen Taliban were killed in clashes in a key Afghan opium-producing area on Sunday, while three troops were hurt in a suicide blast in Kandahar city.

The soldier with the US-led coalition was killed “while conducting operations” in the southwestern province of Farah, the force said in a statement that gave no further details.

The operation appeared to be the same as one in the Bala Baluk district, in which Afghan police said two police officers were killed.

A dozen Taliban were also slain in the clashes, said police spokesman for western Afghanistan, Abdul Mutalib Rad.

Bala Baluk has seen a spike in Taliban activity in recent months. It is one of the Farah areas likely to a see a strong increase in opium production, according to a UN drugs survey.

Officials say Afghanistan’s production of opium and heroin is closely tied to a deadly Taliban insurgency that feeds off the drugs trade.

Meanwhile, the suicide car bomb blew up near Nato troops in the southern city of Kandahar, Canadian and Afghan officials said.

Three soldiers with Nato’s multinational International Security Assistance Force were wounded, ISAF spokesman Major Martin O’Donnell said. He did not provide the nationalities of the soldiers.

Two children were also hurt in the blast, Afghan police said.

Canadian Captain Fraser Clark confirmed the bombing was a suicide attack.

The Taliban have been behind a wave of such blasts, in an insurgency launched in the months after they were removed from government in 2001.

The US-led and Nato forces — about 70,000 troops — are helping the Afghan government fight the insurgency in a battle that has gained pace in the past two years, with 8,000 killed in 2007.

In other violence, a bomb planted on a bicycle exploded in Kandahar on Sunday, causing minor damage, police said.

ISAF also announced that one of its soldiers was killed on Friday in the south when a wheel of a large truck he was working on fell on him. —AFP