Gunmen shot dead a road worker subcontracted to a US project in southern Afghanistan yesterday, police said, while coalition troops killed eight attackers in separate incidents.
Three other road builders were wounded when their vehicle came under fire in southern Zabul Province as they were driving to work, the provincial police chief said.
He blamed the attack on "enemies of Afghanistan" -- a term used by the government to refer to remnants of the Taliban regime toppled from power in 2001 and now waging a deadly insurgency.
The Taliban has often warned Afghans against working for US and other firms trying to rebuild war-ravaged Afghanistan and has already killed scores of locals with foreign employers as part of a guerrilla-style campaign.
In southern Helmand Province on Tuesday, coalition forces were attacked by a band of rebels in the southernmost district of Garmser, the main town of which was captured by the rebels for two days nearly two weeks ago.
Coalition forces killed seven "extremists" in the return fire, it said in a statement.
On Tuesday, US officials said more than 600 suspected Taliban fighters have been killed over the past month, the bloodiest period in southern Afghanistan since their regime was overthrown five years ago.
The Taliban fighters were the targets of Operation Mountain Thrust, a US-led offensive designed to flush out as many Taliban militants as possible before NATO takes over responsibility for stabilising the southern provinces at the end of this month.
The number of Taliban dead was given by Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesman for the US-led multinational coalition. It is also estimated that more than 1,700 people have been killed since the start of the year. They include civilians, aid workers, Afghan forces and more than 70 foreign troops.
British and NATO officials recently put the number of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan at between 1,000 and 2,000, with others able freely to cross the Afghan-Pakistani border.
UK commanders -- in charge of more than 3,000 British troops deployed in southern Helmand Province -- have expressed surprise at what they have called the "virulence" of Taliban fighters.
Publicly, they have made a virtue out of the Taliban's aggression by saying they have confronted and killed more extremists, and more quickly, than they expected. However, this has made British forward bases vulnerable and has left troops over-extended.
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