Afghanistan: Up to 75 Killed in Weekend Violence

US-led forces in Afghanistan today said they killed 55 militants in the eastern province of Paktia, which borders Pakistan.

Militants ambushed a patrol with rocket and gunfire on Friday, prompting troops to fire back and call in air support. Three key militant leaders were among the dead, the coalition said, without naming them.

Meanwhile, the Polish news agency PAP reported the death of a Polish soldier belonging to the Nato-led force from a bomb explosion on Saturday in the south-eastern province of Paktika. Four other Nato troops died from a bomb attack in the southern province of Kandahar.

Elsewhere, Pakistani officials said suspected pro-Taliban militants kidnapped 17 policemen from posts on the Khyber Pass, the vital supply route for western forces in Afghanistan.

Militants attacked four check posts last night on the winding road that leads to the Afghan border, kidnapping the policemen and wounding one in a brief exchange of fire, a senior government official in the Khyber region said.

"Our 17 khasadar are missing," the official told the Associated Press, referring to members of special police forces recruited from ethnic Pashtuns.

"The attackers appear to be outsiders, maybe militants from Mohmand," said the official. Mohmand is a region where Taliban fighters operate.

The Khyber area had been virtually free of militant violence until this year but security has deteriorated sharply in recent months. Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped in February while traveling through the Khyber Pass, although Taliban militants released him in May.

Several aid workers were also kidnapped in the region. Rival militant factions have also been battling to control the area, but according to officials they have no links to al-Qaida and the Taliban fighting elsewhere along both sides of the Afghan border.

Up to 15 people were killed and dozens wounded in fighting in the region over the weekend. Many supplies for the US military and other foreign forces in Afghanistan, which is landlocked, go through two crossing points on the Afghan-Pakistani border, one at the top of the Khyber Pass and the other to the south-west, at the Afghan town of Spin Boldak.