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30 suspected Taliban killed in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — More than 30 Taliban fighters and four policemen were killed in a series of clashes, air strikes and bombings in Afghanistan, officials said today.

A group of Taliban fighters attacked a police checkpoint in Nad Ali district of southern Helmand province Tuesday, sparking a clash that killed 18 militants, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.

The militants attacked the officers guarding a government compound in the district before being repelled by police, Andiwal said. There were no casualties among Afghan troops, he said.

Insurgents have attacked the same checkpoint many times in the past, and the authorities had reinforced their positions, Andiwal said.

U.S.-led coalition troops, meanwhile, clashed and called in air strikes against militants in the same province, killing more than a dozen insurgents, the coalition said in a statement.

Shortly before the battle, coalition forces spotted armed militants in small groups preparing to attack their patrol in Sangin district, the statement said. There were no coalition casualties from the clash.

Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, which has also spread to the country’s east.

Separately, a roadside bomb in the central Ghazni province hit a police vehicle, killing four officers Tuesday, said Sayed Ismail Jahangir, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

In the same province, NATO-led troops and Afghan police detained 12 suspected militants during a raid in Qarabagh district, the military alliance said in a statement.

A suicide bomber, meanwhile, blew himself up next to a British military patrol outside Lashkar Gah Tuesday, wounding three civilians, Andiwal said. The NATO-led force said they sustained no casualties from the bombing.

More than 3,500 people, mostly militants, have died in insurgency-related violence so far this year according to an Associated Press tally of figures provided by Afghan and Western officials.