Reports from Afghanistan say at least 17 people, including three fighters, have been killed in a day of violence which included two suicide attacks.

Five of the dead were police who were killed in the south-east.

Correspondents say the Taleban and their allies are increasingly resorting to roadside bombings and ambushes.

Meanwhile, seven United Nations staff - two of them German, five Afghan - have been kidnapped in the central province of Wardak, local officials say.

The governor of neighboring Ghazni province, Mirajuddin Pathan, told the BBC that the group was thought to have been taken to the border area between the two provinces.

UN officials were not immediately available for comment.

Shots fired

The police chief of the south-eastern province of Zabul told the BBC that the Taleban attacked a convoy of his men on the main highway which links Kabul with the south and west of the country.

He said five policemen had been killed and six injured.

Further west on the same road in Helmand province an army officer said three of his colleagues were killed by a remotely controlled device.

There have also been incidents in three adjoining provinces in the east near the Pakistani border.

Two suicide attackers jointly attacked a police compound in Khost.

Two police were killed when one of the attackers blew himself up and the other fired shots before being shot dead by police.

In Paktia province police said a Filipino road engineer and an Afghan guard were killed in ambushes.

In Loghar, near Kabul, an office which gives security advice said a staff member and driver working for a non-governmental organization were both killed in their car by men waiting on a motorcycle.

In the capital a suicide bomber struck near a Turkish military convoy but killed only himself while wounding a passer-by.

The violence came as a committee of British MPs urged Nato to increase its troop presence on the ground in Afghanistan.

PHOTO Caption

UK soldiers in Afghanistan