U.S.-led forces say 80 Taliban killed

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S.-led coalition forces killed about 80 Taliban fighters during a six-hour battle outside a Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, the latest in a series of increasingly bloody engagements in the region, officials said.

Also, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the entrance to a combined U.S.-Afghan base on Saturday, killing four Afghan soldiers and a civilian, officials said.

The battle near Musa Qala in Helmand province - the world's largest poppy-growing region- is at least the fifth major fight in the area since Sept. 1. The five battles have killed more than 250 Taliban fighters, a possible sign that U.S. or British forces could be trying to wrest the area back from Taliban militants.

The latest fight began when Taliban fighters attacked a combined U.S. coalition and Afghan patrol with rockets and gunfire, prompting the combined force to call in attack aircraft, which resulted in "almost seven dozen Taliban fighters killed," the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement early today.

The coalition said four bombswere dropped on a trench line filled with Taliban fighters, resulting in most of the deaths.

Taliban militants overran Musa Qala in February, four months after British troops left the town after a contentious peace agreement that handed over security responsibilities to Afghan elders. Musa Qala has been in control of Taliban fighters ever since.

The suicide bomber, wearing an Afghan security uniform, walked up to a security gate for Afghan soldiers outside Forward Operating Base Bermel in the eastern province of Paktika, near the border with Pakistan, NATO'sInternational Security Assistance Force said.

Four Afghan soldiers and a civilian were killed, and six Afghans were wounded, NATO said. No Americans were hurt.

It was not immediately clear if the bomber had been trying to gain entry to the base.

Taliban insurgents have set off more than 100 suicide blasts this year, a record pace, and violence in 2007 has been the deadliest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

More than 5,200 people have died this year because of the insurgency, according to an Associated Press count.