ASADABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - A NATO-led soldier and four Afghan police were killed Tuesday in new attacks linked to an insurgency in Afghanistan by Taliban and other Islamic extremists, officials said.

The International Security Assistance Force trooper was killed when a roadside bomb struck a convoy in the eastern province of Kunar, ISAF said. Four other ISAF soldiers were wounded, it said.

The 40-nation force did not give details, including the nationalities of the soldiers caught up in the attack. Most of the troops in Kunar are US citizens.

Kunar, on the border with Pakistan, sees regular violence from militants involved in an insurgency against President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government.

The insurgents mainly rely on bombs, including suicide devices, to attack international and Afghan troops.

Two policemen were killed in fighting with Taliban insurgents in the central province of Ghazni on Tuesday, provincial spokesman Ismail Jahangir said.

Five militants were also believed to have died in the hour-long battle but their bodies were removed from the scene, he told AFP.

Two other policemen were killed in a similar incident in the neighbouring province of Paktika, another troubled region on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, another government spokesman said.

Such clashes have become routine in an insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-linked Taliban who were in government between 1996 and 2001.

The Afghan government regularly accuses neighbouring Pakistan of supporting the militants, with officials saying Pakistani intelligence had a hand in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul Monday that killed 41 people.

Pakistan denies such allegations.

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