The separate US-led coalition, which works alongside ISAF and the Afghan security forces, said it killed around four dozen Taliban fighters in two straight days of fighting elsewhere in Helmand. Nearly three dozen were killed Saturday and more than a dozen on Friday in fighting in the Musa Qala area, an insurgent hotbed. Both battles were sparked by ambushes which Afghan and coalition soldiers beat back with return fire and help from war planes, the force said. The fighting was "part of a larger operation to disrupt terrorist activities in the Helmand province," it said in a statement.Helmand produces most of Afghanistan's opium which the United Nations says accounts for up 93 percent of world supply. The top US commander in Afghanistan, General Dan McNeill, said this week he estimated up to 40 percent of the Taliban's income comes from opium, the raw ingredient of heroin. The Taliban have been in control of the Musa Qala district centre for months and officials have said the small town has become a headquarters for rebels who are assisted by foreign "jihadists" in their bid to topple the US-backed Kabul government.
In other bloodshed, two policemen were killed and four wounded Saturday when a bomb blew up their pick-up in the eastern province of Paktia, provincial police chief Ismatullah Alizai said, blaming the Taliban. Unknown gunmen meanwhile shot dead a tribal elder in the same province, he said.
A toddler died when she was struck by a gunshot from a NATO soldier while troops killed four dozen Taliban in two days of battles in Afghanistan's top opium-growing area, officials said Saturday. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it deeply regretted the death of the child in the southern province of Helmand on Friday. Helmand provincial police chief Mohammad Hussain Andiwal said the girl was two years old and the incident had happened outside her home.
An ISAF soldier fired a single shot to stop a vehicle from coming too close to a military patrol, the force said in a statement. The bullet allegedly ricocheted and hit the child although the incident was being investigated, it said. "Sometime later, a family brought a child suffering from a gunshot wound to the head to an ISAF base for medical attention. Unfortunately, the child died," it said.
Several civilians have been killed in Afghanistan this year by warning shots fired to stop people approaching international security force checkpoints and patrols. Troops are the main target of Taliban suicide bombs, often delivered by car or fixed to a person who launches himself at the soldiers.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A double bombing tore through the centre of Afghanistans southern city of Kandahar Thursday, killing seven security guards and policemen, a provincial police chief said. Both blasts were apparently caused by remotely detonated bombs.
Nine people, five of them children, were killed in a suicide bomb attack on an army convoy in Afghanistan on Sunday, said police, while the Taliban hanged three men after accusing them of spying for British troops. The suicide bomber rammed a car into an army convoy in Mehtarlam, the provincial capital Laghman province, and killed two soldiers, said police. The children along with two other civilians were near the attack. It was a suicide attack, and several civilians were also wounded apart from civilian deaths, Yar Mohammad, a senior provincial police official, told Reuters. 
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Six people have died after being wounded in the bombing of the armoured vehicle of an Afghan elder who played a key role in dealing with the Taleban, police said Saturday. A remote-controlled roadside bomb ripped through the vehicle of Mullah Naqeeb, an influential pro-government tribal elder on Friday, injuring him and nine others, including two of his sons. Six died later in the hospital, including one of the sons, provincial police commander