Clashes between Afghanistan's northern warlords have left nearly 80 militiamen dead and wounded, the warring camps said Thursday, as fighting entered its second day just weeks ahead of an ambitious drive to disarm factions nominally loyal to the central government.

Battles between militias loyal to Tajik General Atta Mohammad and his rival Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostam broke out Wednesday 60km west of the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

As fighting moved east and threatened to enter the city, both sides moved tanks to their frontlines.

"From (Wednesday) night up to now we have more than 70 soldiers killed and injured," Mohammad's deputy General Abdul Sabor told AFP.

Dostam's deputy Sayed Nurullah said three of his fighters had been

killed and six wounded.

The fighters were using light and heavy weapons, Nurullah said.

Fighting Thursday was on the outskirts of Balkh, 20km of west of Mazar-i-Sharif, the deputies said.

"Fighting is still continuing in Balkh district," Sabor said.

Tanks were deployed to guard Mazar-i-Sharif overnight, city police chief General Isa Iftikhary said, amid fears the fighting would move into the city.

US military spokesman Major Richard Sater said US-led coalition forces would take steps to help control the fighting "if required."

"The fighting is in an area where we have a provincial reconstruction team; yes, it affects us, it has impact on what we are doing.

"If required we will take steps to put the situation under control," he said, declining to elaborate.

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali arrived in Mazar-i-Sharif Thursday to try to defuse the tensions.

"There is a big problem in the north of the country. Around the city of Mazar the situation is quite tense now," he told reporters before departing Kabul.

On arrival Jalali visited Mazar-i-Sharif's British-run civil-military provisional reconstruction team helping with reconstruction and security.

Mohammad heads the mainly Tajik Jamiat faction and Dostam, a former communist general who is also a deputy defence minister, heads the mainly Uzbek Junbish group.

They have been vying for control of northern Afghanistan along with a third ethnic militia, the Hazaras' Hezb-i Wahdat.

Dozens of people have been killed this year in factional clashes, one of the biggest headaches for President Hamid Karzai's administration in Kabul.

Two years after US-led forces began destroying the Taliban

regime, Afghanistan's provinces are choked with violence between rival factions and by resurgent Taliban fighters.

Attacks blamed on the Taliban, their allies from al-Qaeda and loyalists of renegade Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the insurgency-wracked southeast have claimed 300 lives in the past two months.

The bloodshed has sent aid workers fleeing to the safety of larger cities, forcing the suspension of desperately-needed development projects in vast swathes of the countryside.

NATO, now leading the 5,300-strong foreign peacekeeping force in Kabul, agreed this week to deploy peacekeepers in provincial areas, answering the long-held pleas of Afghan leaders, United Nations officials and aid agencies.