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32 militants killed in southern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Troops fought gunbattles and called in airstrikes against insurgents in southern Afghanistan, killing 32 militants, the U.S.-led coalition said.

Attacks elsewhere killed five workers for a construction company and a police officer, while a British soldier died when his vehicle overturned.

The major battle began when militants armed with guns and rockets attacked Afghan and coalition troops as their patrol passed through a “heavily vegetated area” in Uruzgan province on Thursday, a coalition statement said Saturday.

The troops returned fire and called in airstrikes which killed three rebels, it said.

When militants attacked the patrol again shortly after the airstrikes, the troops “defeated the attack, killing 29 insurgents,” the coalition said. A 10-year-old Afghan child and two Afghan policemen were wounded.

It was not possible to verify the military’s account of the fighting, which took place in the remote Khas Uruzgan district.

The struggle between security forces and Islamic militants is intensifying across the southern half of Afghanistan, illustrating the limited success of the nearly seven-year effort to stabilize the country.

The Defense Department forecast in a report released Friday that the Taliban movement will “maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008.”

Last year, more than 8,000 people were killed in insurgency-related attacks in Afghanistan — the most since a U.S. bombing campaign drove the fundamentalist militia from power in 2001.

Violence has claimed more than 2,000 lives so far this year, according to an Associated Press tally. More than one-quarter of the deaths were in June.

In other incidents reported Saturday, police said gunmen attacked a convoy of trucks and cars belonging to a construction company in the eastern province of Khost on Friday, killing five people and wounding two.

In the south, police said a roadside bomb killed one officer and injured two on Saturday near the border town of Spin Boldak.

The coalition reported another roadside bomb attack Saturday in Wardak, the province just south of Kabul. It said initial reports showed none of its members were killed, but gave no details.

Three coalition troops and their Afghan interpreter died in a similar blast in the same area on Thursday.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said one of its soldiers was killed and two others injured when their patrol vehicle overturned in Afghanistan late Friday.

The death brought the number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 116.

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Associated Press Writer Stephen Graham in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.