Afghanistan is experiencing its worst violence since the late-2001 ouster of the Taliban regime for hosting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Much of it is affecting southern provinces patrolled by NATO-led forces.
More than 1,600 people, mostly militants, have died in the past four months, according to an Associated Press tally based on reports by US, NATO, and Afghan officials.
The British soldier was killed in the southern Helmand Province, Britain's Ministry of Defense said.
A large number of Taliban militants attacked Helmand's Musa Qala district compound Saturday, sparking a clash with police that left 10 insurgents dead, said Ghulam Nabi Malakheil, provincial police chief.
The US military, meanwhile, said a raid last week that left eight people dead in eastern Afghanistan had killed an ``Al Qaeda associate."
Alam Zer, described as a commander of an Islamic extremist group led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was the target of the Thursday raid in eastern Kunar Province, said Colonel Tom Collins, the chief US spokesman in Afghanistan.
President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation Friday into the killings after police officials said the raid killed civilians who were trying to resolve a feud. But Collins said that Zer ``had links in Pakistan and in the training and facilitating the movement of Arab fighters into Afghanistan."
US forces have been stepping up operations along Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, where Al Qaeda fugitives are believed to be at large along with allies from the toppled Taliban regime and extremists belonging to Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami group.
``The aim of this operation was to capture Alam Zer, but it was his forces who fired on coalition forces and we returned fire," Collins told reporters.
Four rockets slammed into west Kabul yesterday, one landing near a district police station and another damaging a house, an official said. No injuries were reported.
Kabul has been spared most of the violence that has engulfed Afghanistan's south and east, but a series of bombings and attacks on NATO-led peacekeepers has rattled the nerves of its citizens.
Armed men ambushed a bus transferring 30 prisoners from Kandahar to Kabul on Sunday, killing a prison official and wounding a policeman, said Noor Mohammad Paktin, police chief of southern Zabul Province, where the attack occurred.
Some prisoners fled but were quickly recaptured and taken to Kabul, Paktin said. It was not clear who the prisoners were.
