KANDAHAR, July 2: Coalition air strikes killed eight Taliban in southern Afghanistan on Sunday after two British soldiers, an interpreter and 12 other rebels died in a major battle, officials said.

Warplanes dropped bombs on a group of rebels in Sangin district of Helmand province early on Sunday, the provincial police chief said.

“The movement and the group of Taliban were detected first in the area and then the planes bombed them,” police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullah Khail said. Among the dead was a local commander, he said.

The coalition did not immediately confirm the strikes.

The bombing followed an attack on a British base in Sangin late on Saturday with small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire in which two British soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed, the British military said.

Four coalition soldiers were also wounded in the battle, in which attack helicopters and planes were called in to assist forces on the ground.

The base had been under attack for three nights, said spokesman Captain Drew Gibson. “The first two it was fairly minor — last night was a fairly concentrated attack,” he said.

The fatalities were the fourth and fifth British soldiers to be killed in Afghanistan in three weeks. Another two British soldiers have also been killed in Afghanistan since British troops deployed here in late 2001.

Capt Gibson said the force had not yet determined how many of the attackers died.

The Helmand police chief said earlier that 12 Taliban were killed in fighting that erupted in Sangin on Saturday after rebels attacked Afghan police and army and coalition troops.

It was not immediately clear if this was the same battle in which the British soldiers and the interpreter lost their lives.—AFP