Taliban vows to intensify attacks in Afghan south

KABUL, July 19 (Reuters) U.S.-led coalition forces came today under renewed fire across southern Afghanistan as Taliban militants vowed to intensify attacks before NATO expands its peacekeeping role in the country.

A second foreign soldier was killed in as many days in Uruzgan province, the coalition said today, taking the death toll of foreign troops this year to 65 the bloodiest period since coalition forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

Two coalition soldiers were wounded in the fighting yesterday, a day after a foreign soldier and 11 others were wounded in a clash in the same area. Their identities were not given.

NATO will undertake the alliance's biggest ground operation in its history at the end of the month when it assumes responsibility for security in the south from the United States. NATO already oversees operations in the north, west and Kabul.

Leading up to the handover, which is meant to allow the U.S. to cut the size of its force in Afghanistan, the coalition has embarked on a big offensive in the south against a resurgent Taliban and their allies.

A statement purportedly issued by the Taliban and obtained by Reuters today warned they would broaden their range of attacks.

''There will be a manifold increase in mujahideen (holy warriors) operations in the coming few days,'' said the statement.

''The operations will be strong and intense and new fronts will be opened against the enemy around the country.'' DRUGS German defence officials, visiting their troops based in the relatively peaceful north of the country, said the rise in violence was partly fuelled by drugs.

Afghanistan produces around 90 per cent of the world's opium and the United Nations fears cultivation levels of poppy are back on the rise after production decreased in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Taliban.

''A number of small Taliban groups are attempting to activate in the north ... where poppy is cultivated and smuggled,'' General Markus Kneip, commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in the north, told reporters in Mazar-i-Sharif. He was accompanied by German Defence Minister Franz-Josef Jung.

Poppy is mostly grown in Helmand province, but it also cultivated in some areas of the north. The north is a main transit route for opium and its refined form, heroin, into central Asia.

Uruzgan and Helmand provinces, which respectively come under Dutch and British-led operations, have been the focus of the heaviest fighting in the past six weeks.

A coalition statement today said militants were using religious sites to wage attacks.

It said an unknown number of insurgents fired on coalition troops from a religious shrine in Helmand and a supply convoy came under small arms fire from a mosque in neighbouring Kandahar province.

The Afghan defence ministry said two districts taken by the Taliban had been recaptured in Helmand. Two Afghan soldiers were wounded in a separate incident in the same province, and three militants were arrested in the south, a statement said.

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