KABUL, July 3: US-led coalition troops have captured or killed close to two dozen suspected militants in southern Afghanistan during the past week, US military spokesman Major Jon Siepmann said on Saturday.

US-led coalition forces, seeking to quell rising insurgency in the south and southeast in the lead-up to historic elections, have had several contacts with militants in southern and southwestern Afghanistan, he said.

"In the last week alone, the coalition has killed or captured nearly two dozen anti-coalition militants," Mr Siepmann told a news conference in Kabul.

"Roughly a dozen killed and another dozen captured," in various incidents, he said.

Officials in southeastern Zabul province said coalition and Afghan army soldiers killed at least 12 suspected Taliban fighters in a joint operation on Friday, including a man thought to be a top commander of the ousted militia.

The operation was launched after fighters fired rockets on an Afghan National Army post in Zabuls's Day Chopan district, about 300 kilometres southeast of Kabul.

"The joint US and Afghan operation killed at least 12 Taliban including their top commander Sediqullah Sediqi," provincial deputy security commander Colonel Ghulam Jailani Farahi told AFP on Saturday.

"The search operation is still ongoing to chase the remnants of Taliban fighters in the area," he said via satellite phone, adding that five militants had been arrested.

However, Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said that Sediqi had not been captured or killed by coalition forces.

Zabul, along with southern Kandahar province and central Uruzgan, is believed to be a Taliban stronghold. Regular attacks on coalition and Afghan troops, aid workers and reconstruction companies occur in all three provinces.

In a separate incident, three civilians were killed and two soldiers injured when suspected Taliban attacked Deh Rawood district in Uruzgan early Friday.

While early Saturday morning a suspected militant commander, believed to be leading a 15-member guerilla group in the rugged mountains of Zabul, was arrested during a night patrol in Day Chopan.

"We arrested another Taliban commander, Mullah Taib, with an AK-47 on his motorbike in Jilda area of Day Chopan district," Col Farahi said.

The pace of violence has recently increased in south, southeast and eastern Afghanistan ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for September threatened by Taliban.-AFP