About 60 Taliban reported dead in Afghan clash

KABUL, May 24 (Reuters) About 60 Taliban fighters and four Afghan government soldiers were killed in a battle in the southern province of Uruzgan, an Afghan news agency reported today.

More than 300 people have been reported killed in a series of battles, ambushes and bombings since last Wednesday, according to the US military and Afghan officials.

It is the worst spell of violence since US and Afghan opposition forces outed the Taliban in late 2001 after they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

Most of the dead were militants but dozens of Afghan police, soldiers and civilians have also been killed, along with four foreign soldiers.

The commander of Afghan forces in the south, General Rahmatullah Raufi, told reporters the bodies of about 60 militants had been found after the battle last night, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.

The general was not immediately available for comment.

An Interior Ministry spokesman in Kabul said he had heard 10 Taliban were killed in the battle on the outskirts of the Uruzgan provincial capital, Tirin Kot.

In a separate incident, gunmen ambushed a car in in the central province of Ghor yesterday, killing a judge, a provincial official and two guards, said the province's deputy governor, Ikramuddin Rezaye.

''The four were travelling in a car when they were ambushed,'' Rezaye told Reuters. ''We don't know who did it.

We're investigating.'' TALIBAN CLAIM A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said by telephone the Taliban carried out the attack.

The guerrillas, fighting to oust foreign forces and defeat the government, mostly operate in the south and east and have not been known to operate in the mountains of Ghor.

But there have been several attacks in recent months outside the south and east, suggesting the Taliban are expanding their area of operations.

Nearly five years after they were forced from power by US and Afghan forces, the Taliban appear better organised and more aggressive than at any time since their ouster.

The rising tide of violence has disrupted aid and reconstruction work across ever larger parts of the country.

''There's no doubt that the Taliban have grown in strength and influence in certain areas in Kandahar, Helmand and in southern Uruzgan,'' US military spokesman Colonel Tom Collins told a briefing, referring to three southern provinces.

''That's why we're going after them,'' he said.

In the south and east, aid agencies and government workers are increasingly confined to the safety of provincial capitals while bands of Taliban roam the countryside, attacking remote police posts and setting ambushes on roads.

REUTERS SHR RK1555