KABUL, Sept 26: Two battles killed more than 165 suspected Taliban and one soldier of the US-led coalition in southern Afghanistan.

An ongoing clash began early on Tuesday when dozens of militants attacked a joint coalition-Afghan patrol with machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades near the Taliban-controlled town of Musa Qala in Helmand, with Taliban reinforcements flowing in all day, a coalition statement said.

The coalition returned artillery fire and called in fighter aircraft, killing more than 100 of the Taliban fighters, the coalition said. One coalition soldier was killed and four wounded.

Musa Qala has been in the control of Taliban since February.

In Uruzgan’s Deh Rawud district, more than 80 Taliban attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol from multiple bunkers near the village of Kakrak during a six-hour battle on Tuesday night, the coalition said.

The ground force commander requested coalition artillery and air support, which bombarded “Taliban positions, killing more than 65 insurgents,” it said.

Three civilians were wounded in the crossfire and evacuated to a military medical facility nearby, it said.

About 400 villagers blocked a major highway on Tuesday after a man and his son were killed by international forces who were conducting a search operation in Zhari district of Kandahar, villagers said.

Habibullah Jan, a lawmaker from Sanzari village, said Nato forces surrounded the village and killed the father and son. He warned that if international forces continued to target civilians, villagers would turn against them.

“In the past week, international forces arrested innocent villagers from three homes, calling them Taliban. Everyone knows that we don’t let the Taliban into our area,’’ said Karim Khan, who attended the protest.

A suicide bomber waited outside a police station on Wednesday in Helmand’s Sangin district and blew himself up as two officers left the compound by motorcycle, killing them both, said deputy provincial police chief Faqir Askeryar.—AP/Reuters