KUNDUZ (Afghanistan), May 30 A roadside bomb struck a police patrol on Sunday in the remote north-eastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, killing seven officers, officials said, in the latest violence blamed on the Taliban.

A police commander said that he was investigating claims by local villagers that Nato forces had killed and injured civilians in an air raid originally aimed at Taliban.

And military officials said up to a dozen Taliban-linked militants, including their commander, were killed when Nato and Afghan troops backed by air support struck their sanctuaries in the northern Baghlan mountains.

In a separate incident, a foreign soldier was killed on Sunday fighting Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Nato said. The soldier, whose nationality was not revealed, died following a small arms attack, Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said.

The death brings to 222 the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan so far this year, according to a count based on a tally kept by the independent icasualties.org website, compared to a 2009 total of 520.

The police officers were killed when a roadside bomb, the type often used by Taliban militants, hit their vehicle on a dirt road, deputy provincial governor Shams-ul-Rahman Shams said.

“We blame the attack on the armed opposition groups,” he said, referring to Taliban. “It was a remote-controlled bomb.”

In Kandahar province, centre of the militancy, Nato helicopters raided a militant hideout in Panjwayi district early on Sunday, killing up to eight insurgents, said Sardar Mohammad Zazai, Kandahar provincial police chief.

Local farmer Hazarat, who uses only one name, said at the Kandahar city hospital that the strike had injured four civilians, including his father.

Elsewhere in Kandahar, Afghan men evacuating wounded relatives said Nato helicopters struck their mud-brick homes, killing one and injuring four others.

“We were at home. There were no Taliban in the village. The helicopters just came and bombed our homes and left. Four people including my son were injured. One person was killed,” an elderly man, giving his name as only Karim, said at Kandahar's Mirwais hospital.

He said the International Committee of the Red Cross had evacuated his wounded son to the hospital.

The police chief said both claims were under investigation “but as far as I know there was only Taliban hit”.

Isaf said it was investigating the claims of civilian casualties, but spokesman Captain Marco Pica said there was no immediate information.—AFP