KABUL

A wave of Taliban attacks across Afghanistan killed 29 people, including four international soldiers and nearly two dozen militants, military officials said on Sunday. The violence came after a week of intense fighting as the Taliban’s al-Qaeda-backed insurgency, launched nearly six years ago, intensified into the summer.

Two Afghan lawmakers — one of them a former Taliban member — and several influential elders have joined negotiations with the hard-line militia to step up pressure for the release of 22 South Korean hostages, an official said on Saturday. The Taliban has demanded the release of insurgent prisoners in exchange for the hostages.

United States-led troops, backed by air power, killed more than 50 insurgents in a battle in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, the US military said on Thursday. There were no casualties among coalition troops in the 12-hour battle with Taliban militants, which finished early on Thursday, it said in a statement.

Afghanistan’s Taliban movement said on Saturday it had killed the second German hostage after the group’s demands were ignored, a spokesperson for the militant group said. The couple were shot dead in Ghazni province which lies to the south-west of the capital, Kabul.

Floods in eastern Afghanistan triggered by unseasonal downpours have left at least 56 people dead with about 100 plucked to safety overnight with the help of Nato helicopters, officials said on Thursday. In many provinces there was also damage to homes, agricultural land, roads, wells and livestock.

At least seven children have been killed in a United States-led coalition air strike in a religious school in Afghanistan, the coalition said on Monday, amid rising anger over civilian deaths from foreign military operations. More than 120 civilians have been killed by foreign troops in Afghanistan in recent months.

A powerful bomb destroyed a police bus in the heart of the Afghan capital on Sunday, killing more than 35 people, police said, as the extremist Taliban movement claimed responsibility. It was the deadliest attack of its kind in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001.

About 60 fleeing Taliban guerrillas were confirmed dead after their boat sank in a river in southern Afghanistan, the Defence Ministry said on Sunday. ”According to reports we received, all of them on board were Taliban and were killed,” Defence Ministry spokesperson General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters.

A Nato air strike on Monday night killed at least 60 suspected Taliban, including their three commanders, and wounded dozens more in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, police said on Tuesday. Violence has surged in Afghanistan in recent weeks after the traditional winter lull.

The Taliban’s top operational commander, Mullah Dadullah, has been killed in a clash in southern Afghanistan, security officials said on Sunday. ”Mullah Dadullah has been killed and his body is in Kandahar,” said Saeed Ansari, spokesperson for the intelligence department.

United States-led coalition troops killed more than 130 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan over the past several days, the coalition said on Monday, the heaviest reported rebel losses this year amid rising violence in the country. Backed by air support, the Taliban were killed in two separate battles in the western province of Herat, the US military said in a statement.

Heavy floods in 19 provinces of Afghanistan left at least 91 people dead and 49 other injured in the past five days, while avalanches in northern Afghanistan have claimed the lives of 23 people, officials said on Wednesday. The most heavily affected regions were the northern Parwan and western Herat province.

United States Vice-President Dick Cheney said the suicide bombing at the gate of a US air base he was visiting in Afghanistan on Tuesday made a "loud boom" and drove him briefly into a bomb shelter. But Cheney said it was "never an option" to scrap plans to go on to the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he later held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The Taliban has deployed 6 000 fighters in preparation for a spring offensive against government and foreign forces in Afghanistan, said the military leader of the Islamic milita that once ruled the country. ”The attack is imminent,” Mullah Dadullah said in an interview with al-Jazeera television.

Eight United States soldiers were killed and 14 injured when their helicopter crashed in a mountainous, snow-covered area of southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Sunday. The twin-rotor Ch-47 Chinook crashed a few hours before dawn after the pilot suddenly lost power and control of the aircraft.

A senior Taliban leader may have been killed along with his deputies by a Nato air strike in Afghanistan, the alliance said. The incident happened on Thursday in an area of southern Helmand province, part of the main bastion of the resurgent Taliban, Nato said in a statement late on Thursday.

Nato-led troops killed up to 150 insurgents in a ground and air operation in south-eastern Afghanistan after the insurgents infiltrated into Afghanistan from neighbouring Pakistan. Afghan anger over the infiltration of Taliban militants from Pakistan has seriously soured relations between the neighbours, both important United States allies in the war on terrorism.

United States-led coalition and Afghan troops have killed 49 Taliban insurgents in two separate battles in southern Afghanistan, the defence ministry said on Monday. This year’s fighting is the worst since coalition forces ousted the hard-line Taliban government in late 2001. The latest battles were in Deh Rawud district of rugged Uruzgan province over the past two days, a ministry statement said.

Nato will assume responsibility for security across the whole of Afghanistan from Thursday when it takes command in the east from United States-led coalition forces, a senior Nato official said on Tuesday. Nato’s International Security Assistance Force already commands forces in the north, west and south, as well as in the capital, Kabul.

Eighteen people were killed and 17 others were injured in a suicide attack in the southern province of Helmand on Tuesday, officials said. The suicide attacker targetted Afghan Muslims gathered at an office to register themselves for the Haj pilgrimage.