Afghan clashes kill ten

At least ten people were killed in clashes in the last two days and a Turkish engineer kidnapped ahead of a high-level UN visit to Afghanistan to consider how NATO can bring security to unruly provinces.

Factional rivals in the north of the country engaged in what one commander called "fierce fighting" from Friday in Sar-i-Pul province southwest of the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, killing at least five soldiers.

Three of the dead were from ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum's forces and two fought for the mainly ethnic Tajik faction of Ustad Atta Mohammad.

Dostum and Atta are senior members of Karzai's government, which was installed after US-led forces overthrew the hardline Muslim Taliban regime in late 2001.

"Fierce fighting is going on. We are engaged in heavy exchanges of fire," Malim Abdul Aziz, a commander from Atta's faction, told Reuters yesterday. He added that a woman and child died when a rocket from Dostum's forces hit their house.

Dostum and Atta have been locked in a long-running power struggle. Battles between their forces with tanks last month killed or wounded 60 troops in their personal militias, each several thousand strong.

In the southern province of Helmand, three Afghan soldiers and two policemen were killed on Friday when police opened fire on military vehicles with tinted windows that refused to stop for a routine inspection.

Both incidents underlined the instability across much of the country, which in the last three months has seen the worst wave of violence since the fall of the Taliban.

A high-level UN delegation should arrive today to evaluate expanding an international peacekeeping force, prop up the peace process and warn warlords to stop undermining Karzai's government. Security Council delegates will visit the western city of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif for talks with Dostum and Atta to press them to keep a ceasefire.

But the delegates will not visit the south or east, scenes of the worst violence blamed on Taliban remnants and the Al-Qaeda movement.

The week-long trip follows a Security Council resolution for NATO to expand its force of more than 5,000 beyond the capital.

Karzai wants to impose his authority outside the capital ahead of a meeting scheduled for December that will finalise a new constitution and before elections due next June.

But NATO military planners say they would need 2,000-3,000 soldiers as well as planes and state-of-the-art helicopters in addition to the core force to put together a credible protection force.

In addition to NATO-led peacekeepers, which until now have been restricted to Kabul, there are 11,500 soldiers led by the US military hunting Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters blamed for much of the bloodshed since early August.

Both groups were implicated in the kidnapping on Thursday of a Turkish engineer working on a major road project linking Kabul to the southern city and former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

Hassan Onal and his Afghan driver were seized at gunpoint while travelling in eastern Zabul province.

Onal's Turkish employers tried to reach him on his satellite phone, but it was answered by men claiming to be from Al-Qaeda, a company manager said yesterday.

Afghan officials blamed the Taliban. They told Reuters the driver, who had been freed, had brought a note from the captors saying Onal would be killed unless six Taliban prisoners were released from jail in neighbouring Ghazni province.

The road is Afghanistan's single biggest reconstruction project, prized as a symbol of its emergence from decades of war and occupation.

The $250 million US-funded renovation has been beset with attacks on local workers and de-miners, but the United States is determined to have it finished by the end of the year.