Troops raided a compound in Baghran district of Helmand province looking for a senior Taliban commander allegedly overseeing and guiding all Taliban military actions in the province.

In clashes at the property, Afghan and NATO troops killed four insurgents, said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), although there was no immediate confirmation that the commander was among the dead.

The military said soldiers destroyed the compound after discovering a bomb-making factory and that the property had been booby-trapped with bombs.

ISAF said an air strike then killed 11 militants who attacked ground troops as they were preparing the leave the area.

The deputy head of Helmand provincial council, Haji Fazel Barry, put the overall death toll at 25 Taliban militants, including four commanders.

The United States and NATO have more than 150,000 soldiers in Afghanistan fighting a Taliban-led insurgency, which is at its most intense in Helmand and neighbouring southern province Kandahar.

NATO and Afghan forces are currently engaged in a major offensive around Kandahar city -- the biggest city in the south -- aimed at pushing insurgents out of the area in order to help bring an end to the long war.

earlier related report
Foreign troop death toll in Afghanistan hits 600 this year
Kabul (AFP) Oct 25, 2010 - The number of foreign troops to die this year in Afghanistan has reached 600, by far the highest annual toll in nine years of war despite tentative reconciliation efforts with the Taliban.

The milestone was reached after a NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) announcement that a soldier had been killed in an insurgent attack in the east on Sunday.

Another NATO soldier was killed in a bomb blast in the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan on the same day.

The toll of 600, according to an AFP tally based on a count kept by the icasualties.org website, compares to 521 killed in all of 2009 in what was previously the deadliest year on record for the forces in Afghanistan.

On average, two soldiers die each day. A total of 2,170 foreign soldiers have been killed since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan which overthrew the hardline Islamist Taliban regime.

A Taliban-led insurgency has since strengthened each year, but it is most intense in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand.

At least 1,348 American troops are among the dead, and the US military provides two-thirds of the 150,000-strong international force in Afghanistan.

Foreign and Afghan forces are currently engaged in a major offensive around Kandahar city -- the largest city in the south -- aimed at pushing the insurgents out of the area to bring an end to the war.

The surge in military deaths has followed the deployment of about 40,000 extra US and NATO troops under a White House strategy designed to clear major towns and cities of the Taliban and restore confidence in the government.

The Afghan interior ministry said that bombings killed five people on Monday. Three died in a suicide attack on a police checkpoint in the eastern province of Khost and two civilians in a roadside bombing in Helmand province.

Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon headed to Kabul on Monday for two days of talks with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai focused on the deteriorating security situation.

A majority-Muslim country and the poorest state to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago, Tajikistan has been wracked over the last two months by violence blamed on Islamist militants.

Dushanbe has said the incidents -- including a devastating attack on a military convoy that killed at least 28 soldiers last month -- were plotted and carried out by Al-Qaeda-linked militants operating out of Afghanistan.

The US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan said an increasing number of Taliban leaders are showing interest in talks with the US-backed government in Kabul as pressure mounts from the intensifying NATO military campaign.

"What we've got here is an increasing number of Taliban at high levels saying, 'Hey, we want to talk,'" Richard Holbrooke told CNN in an interview.

"We think this is a result in large part of the growing pressure they're under from General (David) Petraeus and the ISAF command."

But he cautioned that the feelers so far add up to "contacts and discussions" rather than peace negotiations to end the war.

The New York Times reported last week that Taliban leaders were being offered safe passage by NATO troops from their sanctuaries in Pakistan, and in one case were flown to Kabul in a NATO aircraft.

Karzai has set up a High Council for Peace to pursue dialogue with the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

Western public opinion is growing increasingly tired of the war, angry over corruption within Karzai's government and mounting casualties.

Dutch troops ended their mission in Afghanistan on August 1. Italy plans to hand over control of large parts of western Afghanistan by the end of 2011.

Canada, which is the sixth-largest contributor of troops, intends to pull its estimated 2,830 troops out of the south in 2011. US President Barack Obama has said he wants American troops to start withdrawing from July 2011.

The objective is for Afghanistan to take over responsibility for security by late 2014, but experts doubt that local security forces will be big enough or sufficiently well trained to shoulder the burden on schedule.

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