Suspected Taliban militants attacked two police checkpoints along a highway in southern Afghanistan, sparking fighting that left 14 insurgents dead, police said Sunday.

British soldiers in Afghanistan. British soldiers will be ordered to "seek and destroy" insurgent remnants of the ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan.[AFP]

About 30 Taliban attacked the police posts late Saturday in Qalat district, 60 miles northeast of Kandahar, Zabul police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail said. The Taliban retrieved the bodies of their slain comrades after the fighting that lasted about 30 minutes, Malakhail said.

He said there were no casualties among the police. But a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack and said at least seven police were killed. He said militants burned one of the police posts.

It wasn't immediately possible to verify either death toll claims.

The police were deployed at the posts to guard the main highway linking the capital of Kabul with Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold.

The attack came a day after a battle in neighboring Kandahar province that officials say left 41 militants and six police dead ¡ª some of the heaviest fighting in a recent upsurge of rebel violence threatening Afghanistan's new democracy.