KANDAHAR, Aug 20: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Afghan forces battled Taliban in Afghanistan with rockets, artillery and air strikes killing 71 militants on Sunday.

Five Afghan troops were also killed in the battles which started late on Saturday after the Taliban attacked a police convoy in Panjwayi district of Kandahar province, said Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, the district government chief.

In neighbouring Helmand province, a clash with Taliban on Sunday left one British soldier dead and three others wounded, the UK defence ministry said.

Militants ambushed a police patrol in Farah province, sparking a gunbattle that left one officer and two attackers dead, a regional governor said.

In Panjwayi, Nato troops used artillery and aircraft to inflict “heavy casualties against Taliban fighters,” an alliance statement said.

The Taliban had stormed the town from three directions and begun fighting with local police.

“It was a sizable engagement,” said Toby Jackman, a Nato spokesman. He called the clash part of an ongoing operation ‘to extend security’ along the Kabul-Kandahar highway.

The bodies of 71 slain militants were found in three locations, scattered through orchards alongside their weapons, Mr Sarhadi said.

“We have 35 Taliban bodies in Panjwayi town and 11 out of the town,” he told AFP. Another 25 bodies were found in nearby Sperwan village, he said.

“The police are still searching for more bodies of Taliban,” he said.

At least four policemen and one Afghan soldier were killed in the clashes, officials said. Three policemen and five soldiers were wounded, while three policemen were missing.

A purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi claimed that they killed ‘scores’ of policemen and damaged 10 of their vehicles before a Nato air strike left 12 militants dead and eight wounded.

In Farah, attackers ambushed a highway police patrol, killing one officer before two militants were shot dead, said Ghulam Dastagir Azad, the governor of neighbouring Nimroz province. The ambush in Bakwa district also resulted in six officers and three attackers being wounded, he said.

Afghan officials announced on Sunday that six policemen and four Taliban were killed when militants attacked a border police patrol in Nimroz on Saturday.

The coalition said the weekend attacks were ‘localised’ and not part of a coordinated Taliban operation.

“It is not like they are mounting an offensive that is sweeping through the south,” spokesman Maj Thomas Collins told reporters in Kabul.—AP/AFP