"Dozens of terrorists" were killed in the operations Saturday in the southern province of Uruzgan and their bodies remained on the ground, the defence ministry said.

It did not give a number of dead because of a policy of not issuing a precise number of rebel dead, but a high-ranking ministry official said on condition of anonymity that more than 40 Taliban were killed.

The dead included the man commanding the group, the ministry said.

More than 40 weapons, including rockets and heavy machine guns, as well as a police vehicle were seized after the operation, it said.

The US-led coalition said however only "more than a dozen" Taliban were killed.

Troops had called in air power against the rebels after they had tried to ambush a security patrol of international and Afghan forces with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire.

The Taliban, in government between 1996 and 2001, are waging an insurgency that is particularly active in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the Islamic rebels are said to have some local support.

The ministry said Afghan and foreign soldiers did not suffer any casualties in the operation, one of the deadliest reported for the insurgents this year.

International forces helping the Afghan government, however, lost three soldiers in two separate bombings in the south on Friday.

Two were killed when a roadside bomb blew up their vehicle while they were on a security patrol on a busy road west of Kandahar city, the US-led coalition force said in a statement late Saturday.

Another Western soldier was killed in a similar incident the same day elsewhere in the south, the separate NATO-led force said Friday, without giving the exact location of the incident.

The nationalities of the soldiers have not yet been released.

With the latest casualties, 32 troops out of nearly 70,000 mostly Western soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the start of the year.

More than 220 civilians have also been killed, with rebels executing a series of deadly suicide bombings this year.

Afghanistan on Thursday marked the start of spring, which is also the traditional fighting season in this mountainous Central Asian country.

In other incidents related to the insurgency, police in the southern province of Zabul killed four rebels last Saturday, a police commander said.

And eight mines were discovered planted on a road in the eastern province of Kunar, the interior ministry said.

Last year was the deadliest of the insurgency, launched after the Taliban were able to regroup following their ouster in a US-led campaign in late 2001 when they did not hand over Al-Qaeda leaders for the September 11 attacks.

More than 8,000 people, most of them militants but including about 1,500 civilians, were killed in last year's unrest, according to the United Nations.

This year is expected to be just as intense and NATO has been calling on alliance members to commit more troops to the fight, especially in the south where troops from around a dozen nations are under pressure.

US officials have said they expect pledges of extra forces and equipment at a NATO summit in Bucharest early next month.

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