Taliban threaten to step up Afghan suicide attacks

LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) Taliban guerrillas in southern Afghanistan are threatening to step up suicide attacks, saying as many as six bombers could strike at once, BBC television reported today.

The BBC said a reporter for its ''Newsnight'' programme met Taliban guerrillas in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, where they have fought fiercely against British soldiers.

BBC reporter David Loyn said the Taliban he met were well armed and had new vehicles and communications equipment.

''So far you see just individual suicide attacks, but in the future you might see as many as six people committing the attacks simultaneously,'' Hajji Mullah Wahid Ullah, described as a Taliban adviser, told the BBC.

''Countless people have enlisted to become suicide bombers.

This upsurge is the result of the pressure we are under,'' he said.

The comments follow a recent warning by fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar who said his men will intensify their fighting in Afghanistan to ''surprising'' levels to drive out foreign infidels.

A suicide bomber killed several civilians, including two children, and a British Marine in an attack on a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan last Thursday, witnesses and officials said.

Last Friday, a suicide bomber killed an Afghan soldier and wounded seven more in an eastern province, the army said.

NATO troops have killed almost 50 Taliban guerrillas and several civilians in fighting in the Islamist group's southern heartland, witnesses and alliance officials said earlier today.

Reuters DKS VP0235